


The Island Man

by Amber_Skye



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Depressed Steve Rogers, Gaslighting, Grief/Mourning, Homeless Steve Rogers, Homelessness, Hurt Steve Rogers, Mental Health Issues, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Sleep Deprivation, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve Rogers-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29098821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber_Skye/pseuds/Amber_Skye
Summary: The man calling himself Steve seemed puzzled, but not upset.“I’m sorry to be a problem,” he said again. “I would have thought news would have travelled by now. I’m pretty sure people will be looking for me.”He frowned. “Maybe they haven’t had time. Listen, I really need to get back to New York.” He looked at her earnestly. “I’ve been asking people all day, but no one will tell me anything. What’s happening with the war?”The doctor found herself in unfamiliar territory. “The war?” she echoed.He nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I crashed the plane. I think it’s been a couple days, I’ve been pretty out of it.”“Today is the 12th May,” she told him.All the colour drained from his face.-------------------------------------------------OR: What if SHIELD never found Captain America? What if one spring, the Valkryie thawed and Steve Rogers had to navigate the 21st century alone?-------------------------------------------------
Comments: 89
Kudos: 97





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wakes up in the ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started off as a one-shot that I couldn’t get out of my head, but when people were keen to know what happened next I decided to write the rest. I have planned about 15 chapters, roughly 30k - we shall see!
> 
> You can imagine the background to this fic is movie canon-compliant for the most part. The major exception is that Steve is not discovered by SHIELD, with all the implications that has - he is therefore not beating up punching bags in New York when Nick Fury is recruiting for the Avengers, for example. The Chitauri attack/Battle of New York also doesn’t happen in May 2012.

At some point, the nothing became a blackness, and he became aware that he couldn’t see.

This didn’t bother him, exactly. He just noticed it.

Then he noticed that everything was very quiet, because he couldn’t hear anything either.

This didn’t bother him either. He felt quiet, too, sort of half dreaming and detached and sluggish. It was calm.

He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, and he couldn’t move, but everything was ok. Pleasant, even. A gentle quiet.

He slowly became aware of...a heaviness, in the middle. In his stomach?

No, his chest. There was something clutching and squeezing with a terrible weight in his chest. As soon as he noticed it, he tried to breathe, and found that he couldn’t do that, either.

He tried to move – and it _burned_. There was fire wrapping around his body, dragging cold tongues of pain across every inch of him. He had no hands, but he had arms and he wished he didn’t because as soon as he noticed them they were burning and stabbing and hurting and then he had legs and a body and a head and there was nothing but the screeching pain and the blackness and the silence -

He breathed, and choked, because his lungs were full of ice.

Water trickled delicately from his nose, dribbled over shrivelled lips. He jerked reflexively, throat cracking free from frost. He tried to gulp, tried to swallow, tried to snatch at air.

His chest was heaving with frantic pace in utter silence and blackness, and he didn’t understand _where_ or _who_ or _what_ but he knew he needed to breathe. He knew abruptly that if he didn’t have air he would die and the blackness would become nothing again.

No. No.

His arms, still burning, wrenched clumsily from the ice. He was in a chair.

He pushed with his new legs, and lurched forward, blind, into more cold. He twisted and scrabbled through his disorientation, hauling himself upwards a short distance on his elbows and knees, feeling instinctively that up was out.

And all the time his lungs were heaving into life, sweet, precious air slipping too slowly into his thawing body, coughing out cold water and ice through his gaping, numbed mouth.

He rested there on the floor a while. The pain was excruciating as his body returned to him piece by piece. Blood pumped sluggishly through crystallised veins, and as the ice melted, his breathing returned, hoarse and rasping, but deep and clean.

He resumed his upward crawl, slowly and grimly, consumed by an animalistic need to be away, to be out, to be free. In the blackness, he painstakingly navigated upwards, around unknown obstacles.

When he could no longer ignore the pain, he rested, and when he could no longer ignore the terror of being trapped, he resumed.

When he felt something kind touch his face, he stopped, half-stunned, cataloguing the new sensation.

He lay still in the sun’s warmth and allowed his mind to be quiet again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed, any mistakes are completely my own.

When he next awakened, Steve could see. He was lying on his front in the snow, and the sun had dipped behind the hulking wreck beside him. The Valkryie, his mind supplied. But he didn’t care about the details. He was freezing, and exhausted in a bone-weariness he had very rarely felt in this body. With one arm, he painfully dragged and shuffled himself forward again, into the sunlight and the warmth that chased away the cold. He was shivering, now, for the first time. The sun was bringing him back to life. 

As he slowly warmed, he tried to think. Everything was muddled and confused in his head, making it difficult to think beyond the immediate – the cold, the warmth, the pain. His world had narrowed to survival.

Where was he? He was cold. He was somewhere very cold, surrounded by ice and snow.

What had happened? His clothes were torn, and where his skin was exposed it was blotchy and unnaturally hard. His fingers were red and swollen, clumsy tools that trembled when he raised them to his eyes to look. His vision had returned, but it was still blurry, as was his hearing. He could hear the crunch of the snow by his head as he shifted on it, but as though the sound were underwater.

His skin was a map of persistent pain, pulsing unevenly between spikes of agony and tingling pins and needles. He gasped and shivered, groggy. He must have been unconscious for a while to have such bad frostbite. He had brought the plane down into ice and water, Steve remembered. 

Using his one good arm and the sturdy wall of the craft, he struggled to his knees and began to make his way to see around the other side. He tried to stand, but the pain when he put his feet down was excruciating, so instead he teetered on his knees, squinting in every direction and feeling the cold air bite his throat with every shuddered breath. 

Weak summer (spring?) sunlight illuminated an entirely white landscape as far as his eyes could see. He was lost, then. The word brought a rush of understanding and relief. He was lost. He needed to be found. He had a goal. 

But he needed a plan. Steve frowned at the expanse. Could he walk? No, not now. Tomorrow, maybe. He pushed that idea away, unwilling to consider too deeply the extent of his injuries. He knew he couldn’t walk. So someone needed to come to him. He dropped his head, breathing heavily still, considering his options. A radio? He looked hesitantly back at the aircraft. There had been a radio, he remembered. 

Steve rarely backed down from a challenge. But by the time he made it back inside, his spirit failed him. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to crawl back to the watery grave of the cockpit that he had recently escaped, either physically or mentally. His hands were next to useless, and even if he did find any equipment, he would have no way of repairing it. He wavered, desperation welling up, before resolutely turning in a new direction. He needed a signal for his rescuers, and at the very least, there would be decoy flares somewhere, if not signal flares. Food was too much to hope for, but if he could just find a flare gun... 

The locker he found was crumpled slightly from impact, but intact. The flares looked to be of dubious quality, but there were plenty, nearly a dozen, and three guns. He gamely hauled out the whole box and slithered it back with him outside again. In the sunlight, he lay wearily on his side and inspected them carefully one by one, holding them awkwardly between his wrists rather than fight with his clawed hands.

The flares labels were badly faded, but he could feel the raised symbols indicating colour and use. Using his teeth and wrists, he clumsily loaded two guns with what he thought were red distress flares, and a third with an white illumination light. He knew he would be able to fire them, albeit slowly. He set them carefully aside, with the most robust looking back-up canisters he could find. Then Steve rolled onto his back and simply lay still, shivering, arms crossed against his chest. He would wait until nightfall to see if any of the flares worked, to give himself the best chance of being noticed. 

He knew the odds of being found before he froze to death were slim to none.

A few months ago, he had read the news of a US military plane that had made a forced landing in Greenland. He had also followed the reports of the attempted rescue missions over the next few months. To say they had not gone well would be an understatement. Steve knew the Snowball flight route meant some military air traffic did cross the southern half of Greenland, where he assumed he might be, but they would need to pass within 20 miles of him in good conditions to see any flare. The nearest civilisation would certainly be hundreds of miles from his location. 

There was very little wind, so there was no point in sheltering next to the ship where the shadows would eventually reach him. Instead, he turned his frozen face to the sun and gazed vacantly into the clear sky for a few minutes, then closed his eyes. 

When he next opened them, he experienced a moment of disorientation. The sun had dipped lower, but it was still bright. His uniform was sodden, but no longer solid ice. There was a muffled droning sound in one ear.

He turned to look, puzzled, then lunged onto his front, scrabbling for the gun.

His hands protested at the abuse and he sobbed aloud at the shocking pain, but didn’t relent. He rolled back, held one shaking arm above his head, covered his face with his damaged arm, and fired. The pistol cracked, and he dropped it as he grabbed the next and fired again.

He squinted into the sky. A thin line of grey smoke fizzled above him, but he couldn’t see high enough to see if it had worked. He stared in vain, then laboriously reloaded and fired another red flare. The droning sound had completely gone now. He collapsed back on the ground, breathing heavily with even that small exertion.

The crushing weight of disappointment and the horror of his own slowly approaching demise pressed him into the uncaring ground, and he lay without moving for a long time as he sun set. 

When the darkness had settled around him, he repeated the exercise. Against the blackness, he could see that less than half of his efforts produced any visible light. Most of the flares had failed. Against the immeasurable tableau of thousands upon thousands of stars, he felt very insignificant and small. Just one little pinprick of life under an indifferent sky.

He dozed fitfully, startling awake with a sort of bewilderment each time to find himself still living. He felt sure this was his end. There was nothing else to do but wait. It was a strange comfort to die with an audience, no matter how apathetic the stars may be to his fate. 

He didn’t hear the snowshoes that clumped up beside him, or feel the gloved hands that touched his face.

His eyes were open as he was loaded onto the sled, but he blinked unseeing, body limp and unresisting.

He did feel the liquid sunshine they smeared on his lips, and he swallowed reflexively when it slipped down his throat. The warmth that pervaded his bones was impossible to ignore, too, licking across him with equal parts pleasure and pain. As the cold really, completely left, the pain from his frostbite became louder, and he writhed with it, even as he reached open-handed for the spoon and tried to feed himself more. 

The man murmured something indistinct. He held the soup to Steve’s lips gently, bit by bit. When Steve finished it, he silently fetched him a rations bar of some sort, and broke off pieces for him to eat independently with his swollen hands. Steve ate ravenously, devouring everything the man set within reach – he didn’t recognise everything he was eating, but he was too desperately hungry to consider it before he shoved it in his mouth.

His hands still shook, and as his body temperature continued to rise, his whole body was racked with increasingly violent shudders. As he fed himself, hot liquid sometimes spilled down his chin and he dropped crumbs onto the blanket. The man came and went with more and more, and at length another man came to the door of the small cabin and peered in at him suspiciously. Steve met his eyes. The man withdrew abruptly. 

When Steve had eaten all he could he waited for his rescuer to come back again, intending to speak to him. But he was exhausted, his body having been pushed far beyond the limits of even his superhuman endurance. He surmised from the movement and noise of the room that he was most likely in a ship. The vibrations of the engine rattled the bench underneath him.

He felt warm and safe. He slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my intention in writing this is to try and imagine how things would realistically go for Steve on his own. But in researching possibilities I've obviously immediately run into several issues - even accepting he's superhuman, superserum, the whole suspended animation thing, he just...should have died. For example, flares only last about 10 years apparently. He's probably about 1000 miles from any settlement, and that's being generous with where I've put him on the map. Look up the 1942 US search and rescue attempts in Greenland to see what I mean - if this had been canon, Steve basically would have had no chance.  
> That said, I want him to live, or there's no story! (Not that it gets any better for him, poor soul). Hope you enjoyed.


	3. Chapter 3

“So, where exactly did you find him again?”

“Near here.” The fisherman jabbed impatiently at the map again. He had already said all this.

“And he’s not said anything? Well, no, I suppose, he’s half-dead...”. Nielson was honestly at a loss. He was used to directing ship’s cargoes around the country’s most significant port city, but generally those cargoes arrived and left on rigidly documented container ships, manned by captains he knew by name with long familiarity. This fellow, however, was causing him a headache.

“He said thank you. He’s English,” the fisherman said again. “And yes, half-dead. But he eats a lot.”

“He’s more likely American,” Nielson objected distractedly. “Have you seen what he’s wearing?”

Pederson glared at him mulishly. This was exactly why he hated coming to the city. All this talk, round in circles, this silly man with his soft pudgy, body, bleating concern. He just wanted to get back to his boat and home. He had texted his wife to explain when they came back into phone signal, but she would still be worried. “I mean he speaks English. I don’t know where he’s from.”

“But you found him there, in the middle of nowhere, no one else around...”

Nielson shook his head, trying to understand. “You got the message that there’d possibly been distress flares seen inland by someone flying past the night before, and you were closest, so you went to look, and he’s lying there half-dead. How did you know exactly where he was? The plane mustn’t have been able to see properly or they’d have said there was a man. Hell, how long was he out there?”

Nielson was trying to be professional, but he was fascinated. It was like a murder mystery. This would definitely be in the local news. Maybe they’d want him to give a comment for the story.

“Easy to see where,” said the fisherman impatiently. “He was lying next to...” He gestured vaguely with his hands. “It’s big, I could see it.” He shook his head. “He needs the hospital. He will probably die. He was outside too long, the frostbite will kill him. He can’t even stand.”

“Oh,” said Nielson. He felt queasy, and a little ashamed. He hoped it wasn’t really a murder mystery. Poor man.

He stared at the huge man unconscious on the bench. His legs and lower body were covered by a blanket, but Nielson could see the top of the red, white and blue fancy dress costume the man was wearing. He wasn’t wearing any gloves, so his hands were beginning to blister from the over exposure to the cold. His face was a blotchy mess of more blood-filled blisters and slowly darkening patches of dead tissue. The blackened tip of his nose, set right in the middle of his face, was especially gruesome.

Nielson had had mild frostnip in his fingers before, most locals had. He knew the most painful part was the thawing out as blood and sensation returned to frozen cell tissues. This man would be in a lot of pain.

“He needs the hospital,” the fisherman said again.

“Right, yes, of course,” said Nielson. “Ah. So. An ambulance then?”

Pederson stumped forward and shook the man roughly by his shoulder. They hadn’t been troubling to keep their voices down, but he hadn’t so much as stirred the entire time they stood over him. Now, though, he blinked hazily.

“Get up,” Pederson told him. Tiredness and stress made him more brusque than usual. “We’re going to the hospital." The man only blinked at him stupidly. Pederson gestured, then leaned forward to pull the man’s arm, not unkindly, guiding him to his feet. The man gave a sharp, aborted cry of pain and jerked his arm back. Pederson and Nielson jumped.

The man controlled himself, tucking the arm in tightly to his chest, as Pederson recalled that yesterday, when he had eaten his way through every scrap of food they had on board, he had fed himself mostly one-handed.

Awkwardly, the man pushed away the blanket and swung his legs around to stand up. He reached out with his good arm, looking pleadingly at Pederson, who ducked under and supported him to stand. The man said something to him, smiling tightly, but Pederson had forgotten nearly all of his English as soon as he’d learned it in school. Nielson was walking along the deck talking on the phone.

“Yes, the patient’s breathing,” he was saying. “Yes, he’s conscious. Uh, I don’t know. No, I don’t know. I don’t know, in his late twenties? I don’t know.”

Pederson helped the man as far as Nielson’s office, where he sat heavily in a chair. He was breathing hard, but he said nothing in complaint, just closed his eyes. Pederson’s respect grudgingly went up a notch, even if the man was an idiot survivalist tourist, as he suspected.

Nielson returned and started speaking to the man, evidently asking him questions. The man seemed to be answering readily enough, and neither of their expressions gave anything away about the conversation, so Pederson tuned them out and instead thought grumpily of the long journey home with no food left.

When the ambulance arrived, Pederson helped the man into it, then stepped back awkwardly. The man turned his head, blinking, and said something to him. He was still slipping in and out of consciousness. Frankly, Pederson had no idea how the man was alive. He looked like the walking wounded from a war zone.

“Do you speak English?,” one of the paramedics asked him. “He’s saying thank you. He says you saved his life.”

The man was looking at him intently. His eyes were blue.

“You’re welcome,” he replied shortly in his own language. He shuffled his feet. “I hope you get better.” Then, with nothing further to say, he turned and left.

Nielson was on the phone in his office when Pederson looked in to say goodbye. He stopped and listened.

“No, no, he definitely said he’s with you guys,” Nielson was saying. “He says he was involved in an air battle somewhere and he crashed. He asked me to tell you he wants to get back to New York if he can, and he needs to let people know he’s alive.

A pause.

"Well, I know, I thought that too, but that’s what he said. He said his name was Steve Rogers. What’s he...what? Another pause.

"Well, he’s blond, he’s tall, he looks...I mean, I believed him when he said he was military. What? He’s wearing...a sort of costume, it’s red, white and blue. Like the American flag.”

There was silence for a long time.

“Oh, I see,” said Nielson slowly. “No, I didn’t know that. Yes, I’ve heard of him of course, but...well, I mean, that’s American history really, isn’t it? They don’t exactly teach that sort of thing in our schools.” He sounded defensive. “Bit of a weird prank, are you sure? Well, if he’s not really with you, what do we do with him?” He listened again.

Pederson had the impression this could be one of those conversations that went around in circles for a while. They had a lot of those in these parts, and frankly, he didn’t have the patience for it. It was the middle of the night.

He headed back to his boat, where his brother and eldest two sons were waiting, and started home.

_________________________________________________________

Dr Larsen was sceptical. “What do you mean, they don’t work on you?”

“They just don’t,” the young man told her apologetically. “You would need to use really strong ones, and a lot of it, for them to work on me.”

The doctor regarded him. Her patient, a huge, blond man in his late twenties with appalling frostbite, a messily fractured arm, and a motley collection of contusions and bruises, was sitting up in the bed on the small in-patient ward.

He seemed genuine, but this was not the first time a patient had tried to demand stronger medication than they needed. The hospital kept a strict inventory of their drugs, but it was seen as a potential source of supply for too many visitors. “This is all we have for you,” she said flatly. “Would you like it or not?”

“It’s ok.” He smiled reassuringly at her and the nurse hovering uncertainly nearby. “Don’t worry about it. I usually just do without.”

She stared at him. He had to be in a lot of pain – she had never seen dermatology injuries quite like his before, and hoped she never would again – but equally she wasn’t going to be blackmailed into feeding a patient’s drug habit.

“We've been giving you pain medication since you arrived last night,” she said, in what she felt was her most reasonable voice. “Are you telling me what we have been giving you has been having no effect on the pain? It’s not reducing your pain at all?”

“Sorry.” He really did sound apologetic. “I haven’t really noticed any difference. But really, it’s fine. The doctors before always said it’s just my metabolism.”

“Fine,” she said to him. She turned to the nurse and switched from English to Greenlandic. “Change his meds – no more morphine.”

She hesitated, then added, “Just paracetamol, the maximum dose every four hours. As long as he consents each time.” She wasn’t a complete monster. Even with the paracetamol, she had no doubt he would be sobbing with the pain soon enough.

She turned back to her patient. “We’ll stop giving you any, if it isn’t working for you. If you’re in pain, and you change your mind, tell one of us and we can give you morphine again. Do you understand?”

“That’s great, thank you,” he said politely. ”I'm sorry to be a problem.”

She didn’t respond to this. She had come on shift earlier than usual this morning, having been called out of her bed for ‘an emergency’, and since then, this patient had been nothing but a problem, no matter how polite.

He had recovered remarkably fast once he had woken up and eaten his own body weight in food, charming the ward nurses to bring him far more than she considered a healthy breakfast portion for him. As a precaution, after she had spoken with him that morning, she had instructed all of her staff to give the man as little information as possible, which most of the nurses had chosen to manage by pretending not to understand very much English.

In the end though, puppy dog eyes and an empty plate were a universal request in any language. Dr Larsen could see the appeal, somewhat. He had probably been quite handsome until his accident.

Her team had done what they could for his injuries, but it was immediately obvious that he was going to need to be transferred to the bigger hospital in Denmark for his care. So in addition to her usual ward round, Dr Larsen had spent most of the day going back and forth to the phone in the office, speaking to the port authority, the American embassy, and several Danish medical staff.

She had come back this evening to tell the patient what was happening next. He was watching her expectantly, fully alert. He really had recovered very quickly throughout the day.

“You told me this morning your name is Steve,” she started carefully. “You’re with the American military. You were in a plane crash, and you were frozen in ice.”

“That’s right ma’am,” he nodded. “Steve Rogers.” He seemed almost embarrassed about this.

“You don’t have a passport,” she said. He shook his head.

“And you don’t have any other documentation with you to prove who you are,” she prodded.

No, ma’am,” he agreed. “But the US military would be able to verify my identity. My commanding officer is General Phillips. I was most recently assigned to the 107th regiment. And I have these.” He reached up to indicate the dog tags hanging around his neck.

He had told her all this earlier too. She had written everything down, and then had spoken to a man named Nielson from the port authority, who had told her the message he had been given when he had contacted the nearest US army base. She had then called them herself to verify.

“I called the US military earlier today,” she went on carefully. _Stick to the facts_ , the psychiatrist in Copenhagen had said. _Don’t let him sidetrack the conversation, don’t argue with him. But do confront him when he says something untrue. We’ll be able to evaluate him properly when he’s here._ “They said they don’t have anyone named Steve Rogers serving anywhere in the country. And that they don’t have any missing pilots or missing planes.”

There was a pause. “No ma’am,” he said again. “There wouldn’t be. We’re in Greenland, aren’t we? I was most recently assigned to France. Who did you speak to, exactly?”

“I can’t remember the name of the officer I spoke to,” she lied. “But he was quite certain, and he checked with some others.” The officer she had spoken to had been very clear that they wanted nothing to do with an inpatient with mental health issues.

_Either this guy’s actually mental, or he just thinks he’s come up with a great prank to get himself to go viral,_ the officer had told her. _Either way, there is no way he’s actually an American soldier called Steve Rogers. Trust me, we would know._

The man calling himself Steve seemed puzzled, but not upset.

“I’m sorry to be a problem,” he said again. “I would have thought news would have travelled by now. I’m pretty sure people will be looking for me.” 

He frowned. “Maybe they haven’t had time. Listen, I really need to get back to New York.” He looked at her earnestly. “I’ve been asking people all day, but no one will tell me anything. What’s happening with the war?”

Dr Larsen found herself in unfamiliar territory. “The war?” she echoed.

He nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I crashed. I think it's been a couple days, I’ve been pretty out of it.”

“Today is the 12th May,” she told him.

All the colour drained from his face.

“It’s...what?”

“It’s the 12th May today,” she told him, pulling out her phone to double check. “It’s Tuesday.”

He looked as if someone had just punched him. His face was completely white, and with growing concern, she saw a shudder tear across his shoulders.

“But...the war,” he croaked, looking utterly shocked. “It’s...what’s happening with the war?”

“What war?” she asked neutrally.

He went very still. They looked at each other.

“What do you mean, ‘what war?’,” he said slowly. “I mean the war with Germany. What other war is there?”

She kept looking at him. This was so beyond her expertise. She’d done a module on mental health in her degree, and she’d hated it. He looked so convincing. She couldn’t quite tell if he was a fantastic actor, or if he genuinely had committed to this fantasy story.

Either way, this was not her problem.

“Don’t worry about that just now,” she hedged. “I came here to talk about what’s going to happen next."

She paused, but he didn't protest at the change in subject, so she continued. "The damage to your hands and feet is very severe. You were out in the cold for so long, some of your skin has started to die. It’s what we call deep frostbite. It will probably take a few months to heal, and it might not heal completely. We aren’t equipped to deal with that here, so we’re going to transfer you to a bigger hospital in Denmark. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He had looked away from her and was staring into the distance. A mixture of emotions had passed rapidly over his face.

She had no idea what was going through his head, but when he looked back at her, his expression was carefully schooled blankness.

“I understand,” he confirmed. “You’re sending me to a hospital in Denmark because you can’t get in touch with the military to confirm who I am.”

“We’ve already been in touch with the military,” she corrected. “We’re sending you to Denmark because you need specialist care, so you can’t stay here. Someone from the American embassy in Copenhagen has agreed to meet with you there and help you any way they can.”

“I don’t want to go to Copenhagen. I want to go to New York.” He said it quite expressionlessly, as though he were just stating a fact.

“You can speak to the embassy about it,” she said. “But you need a visa to go to America. And a passport.”

He said nothing to that.

She explained his care to him in more detail before she left. He nodded at all the right points, and said he understood, but she was quite sure he was somewhere else. He seemed very unconcerned about his injuries, though his fingertips were swollen and black now, and she knew he was having difficulty with fine motor tasks. He still hadn’t walked unaided, and she wondered if it had occurred to him that he couldn’t.

_Poor man,_ she thought, _he has no idea what’s ahead of him_.

_______________________________________  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say, if you're from Greenland and you're reading this - I am so sorry. Everything I know about your country is from Wikipedia! If I have accidentally grossly misrepresented your healthcare system or culture in some way, my apologies.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve’s mind was reeling.

Three months. He had lost three months.

He had been _asleep_ for three months. It was inconceivable.

He was fairly sure it had been the 4th February when he threw himself aboard the Valkryie, or at least the first week of February somewhere. How could he possibly have been unconscious for three months?

No wonder he was starving. It simply wasn’t possible. He should be dead.

But even as his rational mind rebelled against the idea, instinctively he knew the woman hadn’t been lying about the date. There were so many unknowns about how the serum worked, so much they were all still learning – if apparently he could hibernate, fine. He’d let Howard work out the details. 

So many things in this place made no sense. The woman had introduced herself as a doctor, not a nurse. Steve wondered if it had been a translation error, but she certainly seemed to be in charge, so he had accepted it doubtfully.

And the technology they had here! Steve had been in and out of hospitals for the better part of his life, visiting his mom at work when he hadn’t been an in-patient himself, and he knew for a fact that New York hospitals looked nothing like this one.

From the ambulance that had brought him here, to the wireless radio/clock/telephone machines they all seemed to have casually in their pockets (Steve really couldn't get his head around the tiny personal machines all the nurses and patients had), it seemed like this tiny, provincial town was way ahead of its time. 

He wondered if anyone had gone back to look for Bucky’s body. 

For a few moments, he let the agony of his grief overwhelm him. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his chin into his chest.

Then he pushed his grief away.

And Peggy – she would think he was dead. Everyone would think he was dead. So why wasn’t the news that he was missing all over the world by now?

Steve felt embarrassed to admit it to himself, but he was used now to being recognised everywhere he went, especially if he was wearing the uniform. Sure, he didn’t have the cowl and his face was a mess and he didn’t have the shield anymore – but even ripped and torn, the uniform was pretty distinctive. It was strange that no one here was reacting to it.

And yet he couldn’t bring himself to come out and say “I’m actually Captain America”. It felt a bit stupid at the best of times, but here, what proof did he have? 

Unless the higher-ups had chosen to deliberately conceal the news of his death. It had never been explicitly discussed in front of him, but he knew there were plenty of people who were uncomfortable with the idea of ‘the symbol of America’ being active on the front line. Captain America’s death would be a huge blow to the American people, and depending on national morale, SSI may have chosen to quietly replace him with someone else for the photoshoots. The serum couldn’t be recreated, but it would be easy enough to find another 6”1 guy and make another costume.

The idea of this didn’t bother Steve overly. He’d accepted being Captain America to serve his country. If there was a better way to serve, he’d take it. It just might make his job more difficult, if he tried to persuade the people here who he was, if the propaganda said he was still punching Hitler somewhere in Europe. 

But even if that were the case, why were the people here hiding something from him? That was the bit that really bothered Steve.

All day, he had spoken in a friendly way to the staff in simple English, to no avail. He had also tried German, and French, and a handful of words from other languages he had picked up. He knew the native language here wasn’t one he had ever heard before, but he had felt sure some of them spoke better English than they let on. They also pretended not to see his mimed requests for a telephone.

And then when some of the other patients on the ward had leaned over and greeted him cheerfully in English, the medical staff had quickly intervened and shut down any conversation. But he thought he had caught sympathy in the faces of the nurses each time they deflected his questions in some way. 

And pretending not to know about the war...as if there were anyone in this hemisphere who wasn’t aware of the atrocities happening in Germany right now. Especially when Steve knew perfectly well the US had had a strong military presence in Greenland for the past few years, with a number of well-established bases. So the woman doctor had definitely proved to be untrustworthy in that respect. 

Thinking about the war brought a fresh wave of restlessness. He considered his options.

Dr Larsen had said they would fly him to Copenhagen tomorrow afternoon. He could speak to someone from the embassy there, and perhaps he could work out how to get a message to Peggy or General Phillips. But a letter would take weeks, and if the people in Denmark didn’t believe his identity either, they were unlikely to help him send a telegram or anything else. He could end up cooling his heels for a while, at the mercy of a foreign government.

He looked ruefully at his feet. They would heal, he knew, and certainly faster than the doctors here expected. But he knew he would be hobbling painfully for a while, certainly not running easily anywhere at his usual lightning pace. The knowledge of his vulnerability only made him feel more trapped and restless. 

Or he could try to make his own way to New York. 

The doctor had said they were going to put him on a plane tomorrow. She hadn’t mentioned any lengthy transfer...so it was reasonable to assume there would be an airfield nearby. In a small place like this, he expected the planes might be quite small and difficult to hide away on without being noticed. He would probably have to steal one, and deal with the consequences later.

It was also taking the risk that there would be an aircraft available that he knew how to fly. Without looking closely at a map, he was hazy on the distances involved, but he thought it was likely he’d be able to make it as far as Canada, if not the US itself, again making the assumption that he wasn’t intercepted and shot out of the sky. That would be an ignominious end.

And even assuming all that, he didn’t know where he would be able to land, so he might be relying on another forced landing in the wilderness. Not a great plan, all told, Steve thought wryly to himself. 

But he had arrived by a ship, and he had seen for himself the dozens of ships of all sizes docked around the port. It would be far easier to hide aboard a large vessel. Where would the ships be going? The smaller ones, like the one he had arrived on, would doubtless stay fairly local, and cling to the coast.

But there had been at least two larger ships, looming indistinctly in the darkness when he was helped across the pier towards the ambulance. They would be putting out to sea, perhaps carrying freight between countries. What ports might they call at? Steve visualised a map in his head again. Reykjavik? Liverpool? New York? Even if he could get to England, he had enough contacts there that he wouldn’t be quite so isolated and vulnerable. 

It was a crazy plan, and if he had been with his team he would never have considered putting them at risk with it. But Bucky had always given him flak for being impulsive when it was just him.

Steve could feel the insistent pull of his home like someone was yanking on a chain around his heart. There would be no more Bucky in New York, ever again. But his old apartment would still be there, and their neighbours, and Bucky’s family.

He had pushed the Valkryie down knowing it was the end of everything, and being awake again, here, still felt dreamlike and unreal. He felt oddly disconnected from himself, surrounded by strangers who didn’t know him and in a world he didn’t know.

He needed to see people who knew him. He needed to see his home. 

All this time, Steve lay placidly in his hospital bed, eyes half-closed, looking for all the world like he couldn’t wait for a quiet night’s sleep when they turned out the lights. When the ward nurse did come around for a final check before the end of her shift, she saw the five patients on the ward that night sleeping deeply, and quietly instructed the night nurse who to wake in a few hours for their next medication. Steve lay very still for the next hour, listening to the activity outside the door, learning their movements and choosing his moment.

As before, he felt calm and steady now he had made his decision. As long as he had an objective, he could push everything else to one side. 

When the moment came, he slipped silently out of bed and gathered his raggedy uniform, which he had insisted on being left nearby. He didn't want them trying to wash the bullet-resistant reinforced material and possibly damaging it in some way. He wrapped the bundle securely in his arms, ducked swiftly past the nurses' station when the nurse's back was turned, and walked confidently down the corridor, avoiding eye contact with the few people he passed.

When he came to a corner he didn’t remember, he took a left without pausing to consider, knowing that as long as he acted like he belonged, he was much less likely to be challenged.

He ran into his first obstacle when he tried the door to the staircase and it was locked. Casually, he kept walking. He ducked into the first open, empty room he found, and stood in a dark corner to think.

Earlier, coming in, he had seen the staff holding out a card on a string around their neck to a flashing light on the wall before they opened a door, but he hadn’t understood the significance of holding their name badge to the wall. He realised now it had been a key. How a name badge could function as a high-tech key was completely beyond him, but knowing that he was locked in to some sort of high-tech hospital prison made him all the more determined to leave.

He looked out the window. First floor, landing on a hard concrete surface. If he were fighting fit, it would hardly be an issue, but with one arm barely strong enough to push open a door, and bare, blistered feet that bit him savagely with every step on the cool flooring, he was frustrated to acknowledge he might not be capable of climbing down, or walking away from a jump. 

He scanned the room he was in. Mostly bare, a large desk and a soft chair, not even a set of drawers. No rope, even if he had been able to use it one-handed. There were night staff walking around, alone, unaware of any danger. Any of them could be easily overpowered, even in his pitiful state, but Steve recoiled from the idea of putting his arm around an elderly man’s neck and stealing something from him. What, then? He stood, helpless and uncertain. 

He looked out the window again. Opened it quietly, fighting with a safety catch that initially prevented it from opening more than a crack, then put his head out and looked up and down the building. Down to his right, several rooms away he guessed, the main front door at ground level had a sort of porch over it, a basic corrugated covering supported by two sturdy metal poles. It looked like it would take his weight if he stepped carefully, and he could slide down the pole to ground level.

But the outer wall between here and there was completely smooth, nothing to grip onto. And he had walked around that way inside already, and he knew the doors to get to the window above the porch were locked, too. 

Steve made his decision.

Stepping back into the shadows, he pulled off the hospital gown and pulled the battered red, white and blue uniform on again. He eased his feet into his boots. The whole thing was uncomfortable, but he knew he needed the protection.

He crouched on the window ledge, took a moment to steady himself, then jumped.

He knew the moment he hit the ground and rolled onto his shoulder he’d got the angle slightly wrong. The impact jarred through his whole body, and although he’d been trying to hold his fractured arm into his chest, he was forced to fling it out to arrest his momentum and make sure he didn’t break his neck. The pain was electrifying, but his blood was up, pounding in his ears as adrenaline surged through him, and he swept to his feet with only a slight stumble.

Then he was running, because standing in a brightly lit parking lot in a kaleidoscope uniform meant the stealth part of this mission was over.

He darted into the shadows as quickly as he could and didn’t stop running until he reached the port, where he sprang silently behind a cabin serving as an office building and crouched, catching his breath as quietly as he could and letting the pain wash over him. He tried to acknowledge the pain, reminding himself it was just his body's way of warning him of an issue, but it was hard to think clearly through the haze.

He was deeply frustrated with himself and his weakness. The day of rest and food had helped immensely, but he knew from past experience that the serum’s incredible healing factor could only work fully if he gave his body enough rest and food to recover. From everything the lady-doctor had suggested about recovery times for a normal human, he guessed he would need close to a week of solid recuperation before he was completely fighting fit again, and it didn’t seem like that was happening any time soon. He hated it, reminding him all too clearly of the pitiful weakness of his old body before the serum. 

When he gathered himself, he took stock of his surroundings. Even at this late hour, there were some people still moving around the port, exactly as there had been when he’d been here almost 24 hours before.

Steve scanned the docks. Brooklyn had plenty of shipyards, and he’d had occasion to wander round them more than once when meeting Bucky after a shift. There had been no place for him, five foot nothing and with a crooked back, so he’d had plenty of time to hang back and watch what was going on. Now, he could see in a few glances which ships were in dry dock, and, yes, there were two hulking freight ships at the far dock. He couldn’t tell if they were the same ones as yesterday. 

He spared another uneasy glance around to take in the strangeness of the place. Everything from the men’s clothing to the bricks they used for the buildings to the colour of the lightbulbs was just...wrong. He reminded himself, as he had been doing ever since he arrived, that he was in a foreign country. Of course things would be different. Still, the sooner he got back to New York, and familiarity, the better.

There was a sick fear deep in his belly, that he uneasily identified as homesickness. He pushed it firmly aside. 

Crouching in the darkness was a good place to overhear conversations as men loitered under the light by the door to the cabin, but he couldn’t understand anything that was said. Instead, he guiltily targeted four men having a smoke break. His fingers were still stiff, but with effort, he could pinch a small stone he plucked out of the ground.

In the ensuing confusion, Steve snatched the smouldering cigarette from the ground between two clumsily pinched knuckles, and sucked on the end to keep it alight. The warm smoke swirled through his lungs, pleasantly familiar, though an entirely different taste to his old asthma cigarettes. He slipped swiftly and silently away, determinedly ignoring the pain as a patch of raw skin on his leg oozed blood that clumped stickily to his uniform. 

The cigarette was sufficient to set a few small fires, enough to draw enough attention and commotion to cover his movements. He dashed back to the office cabin and forced the door.

The room had two strange sort of black picture frames, attached to two typewriters, sitting in the middle of the desks. He spared them a curious glance, but he didn't need to know about this country's technological advancements in typewriters, and he didn‘t have time to look through the messes of paper scattered haphazardly over the desk.

There was a large map pinned to the wall - he'd seen it the other day - and a typed print-out next to it. He leaned in close and read both rapidly, committing the route maps and scheduling information to memory.

As he had remembered, there was a jumble of coats and clothing items hung up on pegs. He pulled on a soft, baggy blackjacket, then a bulky orange coat over that, and jammed a white hat on his head. Thank God his boots weren't still the bright red ones he'd initially been given for the USO shows. With the most colourful part of his uniform covered by the coat, at least no one here would look askance at torn blue trousers and battered brown boots. He looked mostly like the other men wandering around the yard.

The stolen coat had deep pockets at least, and he miserably stole a water bottle and a handful of some sort of food bars too, from on top of the lockers.

_Captain America, the bully who steals your lunch_ , he thought unhappily. 

Then he was outside again, ducking his head, walking at an easy pace towards the huge red ship he now knew would be in Reykjavik in just over 48 hours. From there, he expected to be able to locate another ship going to New York.

In his new disguise, and with the shipyard thoroughly distracted by the spectacle of his merrily burning arson attempts, no one looked twice at him as he strode aboard and melted, exhausted, into a quiet corner. 

_______________________________________ 

It was in fact nearly a week later that he finally set foot in New York. By that time, he knew something was very, very wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I vaguely based the locations in this chapter on hospitals and industrial places I've worked in. I'm pretty sure actual Greenland would be better-run and Steve couldn't just wander around where he likes with minimal interference, but, hey, poetic licence.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, Chapter 5...I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. It's definitely a pinnacle point for Steve, and I had a lot of fun writing it (thank you, Google maps), but I guess I'm not sure I really captured everything I wanted to. I can picture it all very clearly in my head, but I'm not sure that comes across in what I've written. Sometimes it's too melodramatic and sometimes it's just not enough. Ah well - that's the fun of writing and practising, isn't it! Hope you enjoy this part of the story.

Steve stumbled the last few steps to the edge of the murky water. Dropping heavily to his knees, he scooped with trembling hands, sucking greedily at the moisture, then spat in revulsion.

Saltwater. _Stupid_. He should have known.

He looked desperately at the water. He had hoped it would be fresh enough here at low tide. But he knew saltwater would only make him thirstier.

By taking only tiny sips across the 48 hour journey, he had made the stolen water bottle last as far as Reykjavik, but he had been unable to find anything to eat or drink in the 12 hour period it took him to slip aboard another ship sailing to New York. Once underway on the second ship, he had managed to eat and drink hurriedly on one occasion in an empty mess room, and refilled the water bottle to keep with him.

But since then, he had had no further opportunity to steal food. The small crew had known or suspected he was aboard, and he had been forced to move near-constantly around the huge vessel, relying on his sensitive hearing to alert him to their movements, and sleeping only rarely in fits and starts. He had managed to evade them for the few days the journey took, but he had not eaten anything for 36 hours.

No food. No water. No sleep.

He had experienced deprivation of his physical needs before, and endured stoically, as was his duty. Any soldier was not in service to put his own comfort first, and it was often necessary to go without. The serum allowed to him push further beyond what any of him fellow soldiers could endure, at the cost of a higher-than-usual metabolism that would eventually demand its payment as he operated under a huge calorie deficit. But the combination of his unyielding, stubborn nature, paired with a powerful body that would take and take and keep pushing on, had never yet failed him.

This, though. Steve could feel himself coming close to his limit. He could see the edge of his strength like a near-physical drop looming in the edge of his vision, where his peripheral vision flickered and swam, and in the moments when he moved his head too quickly and his eyes didn’t quite catch up.

It wasn’t just the physical deprivation: the exhaustion, the hunger, the pain. It was the fear. Something was wrong, and he didn’t understand.

He was back in New York. He knew it was New York. It had to be New York.

The sun was rising over his home city, skyscrapers growing out of the sea, gulls wheeling overhead. But even in his sleep-deprived state he knew this was not the city he had last seen in 1944.

He was looking across the water at Newark Airport, where the US Army had set up a base of operations since the declaration of the war. He remembered the airport being built, remembered being on more than one flight in and out on a USO tour.

He did not remember the monstrosities that were thundering through the sky low above his head.

Sleek, long pill-shaped bodies. Most were white, with bold painted patterns proclaiming names he had never heard of. Jet Blue? Virgin Atlantic? Steve had seen countless planes in his lifetime. The Valkryie herself had been beautiful in a deadly way, a masterpiece of human engineering. But not even the biggest bombers he’d seen came anywhere close to these. These ones looked like at any second, gravity would catch on they shouldn’t be there, and they’d drop on his head.

Up until now, he had told himself all the strange things he saw was just foreign countries. Places he hadn’t been, people and technology he hadn’t learned about. He'd never been on ships like that before, just another new experience for him.

Sure, he’d lost a couple of months somehow in the ice. But he’d closed his mind firmly to the implications of a prolonged coma. He just had to get home. Home would be just the same. Of course it would.

That hope had finally been ripped away from him. He felt lost again. Adrift. Bewildered.

_Home_ , Steve told himself. _Brooklyn. You didn’t come all this way to sit on Staten Island. You’ve got a mission, soldier. See it through._

He rose unsteadily, pushing on his own thighs to stand. But once he was up, it was easier. _One foot in front of the other. Don’t think. You’ve got a mission. Walk_.

He’d had plenty of time aboard the ship to think and plan his next move. He had no money for further travel, but he was close enough now that he could walk. The most straightforward thing would be to report first to the army terminal in Brooklyn.

Then, if they couldn’t give him a bed, he would knock on his friends’ and neighbours’ doors and beg to stay the night. There had been no point in him keeping up the rent on a place while he was overseas, so he had arranged to store everything he owned with a friend of Bucky’s. It meant he had nowhere to come back to when he occasionally did have leave, but in his neighbourhood, he had friends enough who were happy enough to help out Sarah Rogers' son in a pinch, and delighted to help out Captain America returning from duty. If he could just get back to Brooklyn, he knew he’d be ok.

But it would be a long, long walk. He knew the area from maps if not from personal experience, so he planned to head south first to the Bayonne Bridge. He'd cross from Staten Island into New Jersey and cut straight through Bayonne, passing as near to the Statue of Liberty as he’d ever been in his life. He’d be able to look across the water from there and see Brooklyn, but with no money for a ferry, he’d have to trek north along the Hudson for hours before there was a bridge he could cross into Upper Manhattan, then cut all the back through to downtown and finally across Brooklyn Bridge.

Steve had never actually walked anything like this before through the city, but he reckoned it would be at least 30 miles, which was no different from a long, hard day’s march with his unit.

_And the added bonus of no food, water, or supplies to carry,_ he thought wryly.

He made his way to the main road, and left the stolen orange jacket at the vehicle entrance to the container port. There was no one manning the gate when he approached, which he was secretly relieved by, so he left the jacket hanging neatly on one of the gate posts. He tied the arms of the jacket around the post so it wouldn’t blow away in the wind, and propped the white hard-hat on top. Hopefully someone would find them, and even if they couldn’t return them to the port he’d stolen them from, they could be used by another worker with more right to them.

Guiltily though, he kept the soft black jacket he’d also stolen. The last time he had walked around New York in his uniform had been for a USO show, and he wasn’t ready for that kind of adoring, well-meaning, but overwhelming attention just now.

He ran into his first difficulty trying to cross the first bridge, having followed the water to find it. Despite the early hour, the roads were chaotic with cars of all shapes and sizes, their headlights too vulgar and dazzling bright, and the new road had clearly been built with cars in mind, not pedestrians weaving their way home. He was forced to backtrack more than once, when confronted with multiple lanes of traffic zipping past too fast to cross easily.

After being yelled at by a woman in a ticket booth, as well as a short-tempered car driver, he found his way across the bridge, and, finding a broad, straight boulevard going his way, kept heading north, keeping glimpses of water at his left shoulder as his guide. He kept his head down as much as possible, resolutely trying to focus solely on navigating. But couldn’t help wondering who John F. Kennedy was, and why he’d had such a big street named after him.

His heart was thumping very fast.

Even keeping his head down, he could see that the materials of all the sidewalks and the roads he’d passed in the first two hours looked different. Had they all been resurfaced? How long did it take to resurface all the roads in a whole borough?

_More than three months_ , an unwanted voice in the back of his head said. He trembled slightly, briefly. Then he pushed the thought away.

He followed the same boulevard for the next several hours. Head down. One foot then the other. It felt as though his eyes and ears were taking in information about everything around him, but his brain refused to acknowledge anything more than he needed to walk.

_That price list is all in dollars_ , his eyes would note, or, _Is that noise supposed to be_ music? as his ears registered sound. _Not needed,_ his brain would respond, and he would numbly turn away.

Once again, his world had narrowed to survival, tuning out the pain from his broken arm, his frost-bitten fingers and toes, the ache of his tired muscles as he insisted to himself _just one more block before a rest_ . Tuning out the thumping of his traitorous panic-stricken heart, and the fear that swirled just there in the back of his throat, ready to overwhelm him the moment he admitted he was too tired to fight anymore. _Just get to Brooklyn. Just get home._

When he finally lost the John F Kennedy boulevard after several hours walking, he weaved east through the streets until he reached the water. This time, he took the Hudson River as his guide to continue plodding north.

He couldn’t even summon up anything more than a detached interest by the time he saw that like everything else, the George Washington Bridge had doubled in size since he’d last seen it. He could only recall having visited this area once before in his life, and that was before the serum – perhaps his recollections were imperfect, like everything else about him had been, before he had been improved. 

He had half-hoped he might feel relief as he finally reached the apex of his journey. This bridge meant he had reached the apex of the walking route he had planned, and had covered more than half the miles. From here, he would cross the bridge and turn back on himself, finally putting Brooklyn ahead of him as the crow flies. 

But no emotion came. He crossed the bridge into Manhattan, and turned down Broadway. 

Manhattan was irrepressibly familiar. And simultaneously disorientating in its foreignness.

A calm, heady detachment had settled over him. He had now been walking for around 8 hours, and it was early afternoon. All around him, people jostled past, quick-stepping along, eating food on the move, talking and tapping into the bright, handheld boxes that seemed ubiquitous. He quietly added _flashlight_ to the function of the tiny radio-telephone-clock machines.

He hadn’t eaten in three days. Hadn’t slept more than 90minutes at once for six days. His mouth was so dry he half-choked on his tongue when he tried to swallow. His entire body drooped with fatigue. But for hours, his feet didn’t stop their relentless march. 

When Broadway intersected Manhattan's Central Park, he paused. Turned his head back towards the park.

The golden monument he remembered was still there. A food vendor cart was handing two young boys something wrapped in a napkin. The food didn’t look familiar. Some kind of bread? Whatever it was, it wasn’t corn. He ignored it. But after a day of deliberately beating down away every question that stirred in his mind, one memory rose irrepressibly. 

His birthday. 

He and Bucky had taken the subway into Manhattan and spent the day at the Met. Bucky had followed him around tolerantly, cheerfully, hands in his pockets as he strolled after Steve, and never said a word about leaving though they’d been there for hours.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was so big, so...so solid. It had been there since decades before he was born. The Met would be a few blocks that direction. So much he’d seen today had been different, and he didn’t know – he wasn’t thinking about why. Surely the Met would be...? 

Dully, he turned away. He was afraid to look. 

_Brooklyn_. He had to get home to Brooklyn. 

He turned towards Times Square. The detached, numb feeling had returned. He felt as though he were walking along looking at a film reel of actors and landscapes, then his feet inexorably pulled him through the middle of it, looking but not touching anything or really living in it.

His head felt like it was spinning. More than once, his feet stumbled or he didn’t notice properly when he needed to pause, and then there were cars flashing by and people shouting and hands snatching at his arms. He connected with a car bonnet at least twice, spinning away to crumple temporarily on the street, but he hardly felt it, just rolled wearily to his feet and plodded on, everything glancing off him. Nothing could really touch him. 

_That flag is wrong_ , he observed detachedly. He kept going. 

Times Square was wrong, too. There were film reels impossibly plastered to every wall, but the projectors were invisible. There were no bars selling soft drinks. There was light everywhere, flashing and sweeping, overwhelming him. He blinked, hard, but his eyelids were seared with light on the inside, too.

Somehow, he had come to a stop. He had made the terrible error of looking away from his feet, up, up into the scorching lights and heavy noise, and he felt paralysed by fear because this was wrong everything was wrong wrong wrong.

_The dimouts_ , he thought wildly, _how could they ever dim these lights_? 

There was a thumping, roaring sensation building in his ears. His heart was beating a crazy pattern against his chest, flinging itself against a tight band that was closing around his ribs. _Brooklyn,_ he thought desperately. But- distractedly, his feet turned, taking him without conscious thought towards the Empire State Building. Yes, his eyes confirmed. Still there. Still the same. 

He turned again, hurried the few blocks he needed to get a view of - he swivelled his head to look up Park Avenue towards Grand Central Station. Yes, still there. But - he paused in disbelief.

The once-majestic station building was now burdened down by an ugly, bulky skyscraper that squatted atop. Horror trickled down his spine at the sight. The grandeur of the station’s edifices was all but eclipsed by its monstrous height, a vacant, impersonal glass visage staring blankly towards him.

The letters at the top proclaimed _Stark._

Steve looked in silence, rooted to the spot.

Howard had built a tower. How long did it take to build a tower? 

With a choking gasp, he turned away. _Brooklyn._ This time, he didn’t stop until he reached the Brooklyn Bridge.

_At least I know who Lafeyette was_ , he thought hysterically, catching sight of a street name.

The lights of Staten Island glittered across the water, from where he had begun his journey that morning. Lady Liberty still proudly held her torch aloft.

_The dimouts_ , he thought insistently, brokenly. _They need to dim the lights_. New York was a shining beacon, defiant, daring attack.

_Hide_ , he found himself begging inwardly, nonsensically. _I gave my life to keep you safe. Hide._

The steady, tramping pace that had sustained him across the miles throughout the day had gone. He felt lost and bewildered. Every ache and pain he had ignored came rushing back, clamouring for his attention. His feet dragged, head drooping, and he would open his eyes to find he had staggered into a wall.

He forced himself to keep going. He was distantly aware that people were watching him nervously, but they didn’t matter. He lumbered on, hoping desperately, but some part of him already knowing long before he turned down his old street. 

The tenement buildings he knew were mostly still there. Dreamlike, he walked down the street.

There was a flower shop on the corner now. Some kind of diner. Two cafes, a grocery store, some kind of bakery that didn’t display any loaves of bread. The residential windows were all brightly lit, and he could see inside. Small movie theatres in each living room, images flickering brightly in the corners of the room.

The street was packed with parked cars, both sides of the street. He stopped at the building he remembered a friend William from school had lived in with his mother. There was a tiny ladder of lights by the front door. He hadn’t the energy to walk up the steps, so he stood at the bottom and blinked until his eyes focused on the tiny words in lights.

_Flat 1 - M. Shahid. Flat 2 - Dryden. Flat 3 – E. Lewis. Flat 4 - M..._

None of the names were familiar to him. He closed his eyes, opened them again. He was leaning against something. His fingers were clinging weakly to the railing. 

There was no one here. No one was left. 

_Brooklyn_ , the voice in his head insisted weakly. _Get back to Brooklyn..._

A group of people sitting and standing around their building steps were staring at him. 

Nausea rose, his stomach roiling, and his head spun. _Not here. There's no one here_.

He knew. He’d known for days.

There was nowhere else to go. His legs gave way and he dropped heavily to the ground.

He shut his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes. I'm glad I've got this one done because it has not been good for my mental health trying to get into his mindset this week!  
> I've plotted out the rest of the story and I think it's about 7 more chapters after this one. I've written one more so far. As ever, if you like it/if you've any comments, please leave a kudos or a comment to encourage a new writer :-)


	6. Chapter 6

Steve lay without moving for a long time. Curled up on his side, hands tucked into his chest, he wasn’t fully aware of the time passing. Exhaustion had overtaken him.

Occasionally, his eyes would flicker open and focus blearily on a person moving near him. But invariably, passers-by stepped carefully off the sidewalk onto the road, or crossed the street entirely, studiously avoiding looking in his direction.

There was some comfort in not being noticed. He could rest.

More often, he gazed dully at the sidewalk, or simply closed his eyes. He felt empty, wiped clean. There was no room left in his head for thought. His body had been transformed into heavy lead, and he could no more lift his head than he could twitch a finger. The staggering, all-encompassing weariness was the only thing he was aware of for some time. He may have slept, or he may have lain awake for hours or days – he wasn’t sure, and nothing in him cared to wonder.

He understood enough to know what had happened. This was New York, but it wasn’t his home. He had been in the ice for years. Decades. Centuries. Long enough that the world had changed beyond all recognition. Long enough that no one recognised him.

No one was looking for him. There was no one for him to look for. Steve Rogers didn’t exist to these people. The stark truth settled in his chest like a hard, cold stone.

He understood that Bucky was dead, had not died days or weeks or months ago, but years ago. He understood that Peggy was dead now too. There would be no joyful reunion, no apologies and relief and tears of happiness. His friends were dead. He was alone.

At one point it rained, and he lay quietly as the water slowly soaked into his clothes and trickled wetly down his face. His lips and fingertips, which with all the stress and action of his escape had not had a chance to fully recover yet from the ice damage, throbbed distantly with sensations that he ignored. He had retreated far enough inward that the pain barely registered.

There was an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness suffocating any thought that struggled to form in his mind. He needed food, needed shelter, needed help – or what? Who would care if he died? What would it matter? He had nothing left to do. There was no reason to get up.

But against his will, his body was knitting itself together again. The enforced rest of his collapse gave the serum another chance to valiantly repair his body, and though he shied away from it, consciousness was returning to him. His brain slowly clicked back into awareness, cataloguing  his the sights and sounds of his environment.

He could close his eyes, but he couldn’t close his ears to the sound of the traffic roaring up and down the residential street, the pounding of feet approaching and receding, and the chatter of city life all around him. An insistent urge was making itself known inside him to  _ get up move hide eat _ , and his brain was snapping through the limited options available to him.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore it.

Peggy. Beautiful Peggy was dead. Why was he alive?

“Hello? Hello? Excuse me, are you alright?”

A hand was prodding at his shoulder gingerly. He opened his eyes, and craned his neck to see who was standing above his head.

The young man was positioned carefully out of his reach. He whipped his arm back hastily when Steve looked up at him. They looked at each other for a moment, then Steve closed his eyes again.

Whatever was happening, this didn’t matter either.

But the young man was persistent. His words were loud in Steve’s ears, impossible to ignore.

“Are you alright? I’m sorry to bother you, but I passed you this morning and you haven’t moved. I need to know you’re ok.” Another cautious tap on his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

“I’m fine,” Steve said, without opening his eyes. Or tried to. His lips moved, but his throat rasped, and all that came out was a breathy sort of noise.

“What was that?” The voice sounded closer now, and Steve dragged his eyes open to see. The person was looming over him. Steve saw he was wearing a blue shirt and tie. Shiny trousers, shiny shoes. He had a fancy leather shoulder bag. “...hear you,” the man was saying.

“I’m fine,” Steve said again. The man’s eyes flicked over him nervously. He crouched down.

“Can I get you anything?”

Steve considered this. This was unexpected. He shifted himself slightly to raise onto one elbow.

“I can’t get you alcohol,” the man said. “But are you- do you want some water? Are you hungry?”

“Water,” Steve repeated. His voice was rough.

“I can get you a drink,” the man nodded eagerly. “Are you hungry? Do you have any allergies or anything?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?  So, like a sandwich?”

“Anything.” Steve didn’t know how long since he’d last eaten. The man looked at him a bit uncertainly, but scurried off, along the street and round the corner out of sight.

Steve slowly hauled himself into an upright sitting position, using the railings as a crutch. Almost every part of him ached, in a, low, fierce way. He felt weak and useless.

When his rescuer returned, he was sitting slumped against the railings, blinking around himself uncertainly. He almost hadn’t dared to hope the man would come back. Hadn’t been able to think far enough ahead to wonder what he would do if he didn’t.

“Here you go,” the man said, with an awkward smile.

He pressed a clear bottle of liquid into Steve’s hand, and set a noisy, fluttering white bag next to him.

The bottle was noisy too, when Steve closed his hand around it. He tried to pull the bottle  open, and looked at it stupidly when the lid didn’t shift.

The man made a soft noise in his throat, then reached out and twisted it open for him. Steve hunched his shoulders slightly in shame, feeling foolish for not having recognised a  screwtop . The crinkly noise of the bottle had confused him.

But the water felt good on his dry throat. He tipped his head back and poured it into his mouth, gulping it down so rapidly that the man looked seriously alarmed, and trotted away to have the empty bottle refilled somewhere. Steve could open the bottle himself this time.

“So, are you ok?” the man asked, after he’d sipped the water with markedly less desperation than before. The man was crouched in front of him again, fidgeting a little.

“I’m fine.”

Steve was still staring at the bottle. When he flexed his hand around it, the whole bottle flexed too. It felt nothing like his metal canteen, or like the metal bottle he had stolen from the port. It was bothering him that he couldn’t work out what material it was made out of.

“Do you need an ambulance? Or the hospital? Your face looks really sore.”

Steve shook his head.

“Ok, well...” the man trailed off. “Bye then. Look after yourself. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

The words didn’t really register until Steve noticed the man moving away.

“Thank you,” Steve called belatedly.

But the man had already walked quickly away, fingers tapping furiously into the pocket thing everyone seemed to have.

Except Steve, who didn’t even know what they were.

Steve finished his water and looked in the crinkly bag. It turned out to contain a ham and cheese sandwich with two thick, crusty slices of bread, a banana, and some candy. He ate everything slowly. His brain seemed to be taking longer to process everything, but his hands unwrapped food and put it in his mouth automatically enough. The food and water, and the late afternoon sun, were reviving him.

Which in turn was forcing him to think.

Death from a gunshot wound, a mortar shell, or even a plane crash were all types of violence he understood and expected as a soldier. But the creeping death that came from starvation and exhaustion was a different prospect. He had longed for oblivion to be given to him, but in the gentle warmth of the fading daylight, he didn’t really have a desire to seek out death. The habit of living was too strong.

So, he needed more food.

He couldn’t rely on waiting for someone else to offer him food. He had no money to buy anything, and no way of getting any money. He didn’t want to steal, even if he were capable of it, and he was uncomfortably aware that he probably wasn’t. A six-year-old girl could probably out-pace him  at the moment .

He would have to ask for help, somehow. But even with his limited options, or perhaps because of, the thought of approaching a stranger and humbly begging for help made him recoil. He sat there a while longer, lost in thought.

“Here, mate,” a voice came, and a hand brandishing a green bill appeared under his nose. Steve accepted the money with some confusion, and the woman disappeared as quickly as she’d came.

He looked like he was homeless, Steve realised. Followed quickly by the realisation that he  _ was _ homeless.

This, plus the growing shadows on his legs, motivated him to move. He heaved himself laboriously to his feet, knowing the stiffness in his limbs would recede once he started moving again, and gathered up his trash to throw away.

Throw away- the thought made him pause. Some people would throw away food, wouldn’t they? Restaurants or grocery stores. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d looked through dumpsters for discarded food.

No one gave him a second look as he shuffled along the street of  houses, and turned onto a broader avenue bustling with activity around the shops and restaurants. He stepped along steadily, finding comfort in the movement and the illusion of a purpose. He felt better with something to do.

When he came to a trashcan, he tipped the candy wrapper and banana peel into it, but kept the paper bag from the fancy sandwich, and the crinkly bag. These he folded and tucked into the deep pockets of his stolen black jacket.

It was around an hour later when he plucked up the courage to slip down an alley way and approach the back door of a restaurant. He had looked in a couple of dumpsters, but the most edible thing he had found was rotten vegetables, empty  egg shells , and off-cuts of stinking raw meat. He told himself he wasn’t that desperate, but anxiety grew in the back of his mind as he calculated his baseline calorie needs against everything he had eaten recently.

Before the serum, he had never had very much of an appetite (or never had very much food – either way, he was accustomed to stretching out the food he bought) but since Project Rebirth he had found he needed to eat several times more than the average man or he would eventually be overcome by fatigue. The army had always prioritised rations for his unit for that reason.

It was embarrassing  sometimes, but thinking of his body in terms of a machine that needed fuel had helped. He was useless as a super soldier, he couldn’t adequately protect his men or carry out his missions, if he didn’t maintain his body with adequate fuel.

As a civilian though, his need for extra food was just a serious inconvenience.

He loitered uncomfortably by the door for around twenty minutes until the door was flung open outwards and someone came bouncing out, gripping a large black sack in both hands. She stepped over to the dumpster, then started back with a gasp when she saw him.

“Sorry!” he said hastily, hands out. She gaped at him. “I- is- ah- do you-?”

He swallowed his pride. “Is there any food in there?” He pointed to the sack.

She looked at the bag in her hands. She looked back at him.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I- yes,” Steve admitted miserably. His insides twisted with something that wasn’t just hunger.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, you poor thing! I can get you something! There’s nothing good in here, but I’ll bring you something. Um, I mean, you’re welcome to look, I’ll set it here, but there’s just- well, I’ll just leave it here,” she said in a rush, setting the trash bag down on the ground.

She looked young enough that she was probably still in school. Her hair was scraped back in a tight ponytail, and her face was flushed, either with the heat of the kitchen or the weirdness of the encounter, Steve didn’t know.

“Thank you,” he said with difficulty, forcing a smile. “I’m really sorry to bother you, just...I don’t know what else to do.”

“You poor thing,” she said again. She bit her lip. “I don’t know if I’ll be allowed...but I will! I just  have to go back in because I just came out to empty the trash, I need to go back in because my tables are  really busy and there’s a woman who’s  really angry with me because I spilled her water and they’re plating her food up so I really can’t let it go cold, but I will come back in a minute, when I can, I’ll bring you something. I’ll just put this in the- oh, no, you wanted to look in it, didn’t you? Or-” she stopped short, awkwardly.

“No, it’s ok,” Steve managed. “If you’re going to bring me something, that’s ok. I can put it in the dumpster for you.”

“Oh, no it’s ok.” She hefted the bag up with a grunt while Steve stood there uselessly.

“I’ll come back out later,” she told him breathlessly. “As soon as I can, but I might be like, ten minutes, ok?” He nodded and she disappeared back up the steps again, door slamming closed behind her.

True to her word, she did return about half an hour later, with a huge steaming heap of pasta and  some kind of tomato sauce on it. She had helpfully stuck a fork on top. She didn’t come alone this time (sensible girl, Steve inwardly approved), and another young waitress peered at him interestedly from just inside the doorway.

“I couldn’t find a container, so I had to wash out my lunchbox. It’s just spinach and ricotta tortellini, and I put some beef ragu on it because that’s all there was that was hot,” she told him anxiously. “The pasta’s cold, but I thought it might be ok-”

“This is amazing,” Steve cut across her. “Really, this is wonderful. It’s incredibly kind of you, miss, thank you.” She looked pleased and flustered.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “And Mims has the- yeah, thank you- here- it's just what was in the fridge, it’s a bit squashed so we didn’t think anyone else would want it-”. Her friend passed her the napkin, and she presented Steve with some kind of dessert. He swallowed past a tightness in his throat.

“Thank you,” he said with all sincerity. She beamed at him.

“You’re welcome. Listen, are you ok? Your poor hands look so sore. Have you been in a fight or something? I mean, um. Our first aid box here is terrible, but we’ve got band-aids and bandages and things. Are you ok? You just, sorry, but you really look like you need a hospital.” The concern was palpable in her entire demeanour.

“I’ll be ok,” he assured her. “I haven’t been in a fight, exactly, I’ve just been...I’m just really hungry. And really tired.” He felt the truth of the words as he said them.

“Ok, well, eat that. You poor thing,” she said sympathetically. “I’ll come back out later, if you just leave the stuff on the  ground I’ll get it.”

She sprang back up the steps, all energy and life, and the two girls disappeared back inside again. When the door closed, the rectangle of light of the ground disappeared too.

Steve was left standing alone in the dark alley.

He ate everything ravenously, scraping the brightly coloured box with the fork and then licking it to get the last traces of the sauce. The napkin, he used to wipe her lunch box as clean as he could, then set everything neatly in a pile against the wall where he had been standing, so she would know where to find it when she came back. He loitered awkwardly for a few minutes, but she didn’t come back.

He set off with purpose for his last destination of the evening – the large park he remembered from his childhood here. He had mentally prepared himself that it may no longer be  there, but was pleasantly surprised to find it still existed.

He was sure some paths had been re-rerouted, but the solid old trees were unchanged, and he remembered enough of the layout to interpret a cartoonish map at an  entrance, and find his way quietly to a dark corner.

He had better eyesight in the dark than most people, which allowed him to grope a little way into some undergrowth, away from the path. He cleared aside some branches and rocks to make a smoother surface to lie on, then simply wrapped his arms around himself and lay down.

He felt very exposed. He lay stiff and alert for some time, learning the sounds around him, working out what was normal for this spot and what sounds might indicate change or danger.

Eventually, his eyelids drooped and he allowed himself to fall into a light sleep, trusting his ears would warn him if anyone approached.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was pretty tough to write. But in the end, I’m happy with how it turned out, I got in everything I needed to build the next steps of the story. Jeez, loneliness sucks.
> 
> In case it isn’t obvious, Steve is in a really bad way. It’s kind of hard to get that across, because it’s mainly his perspective and I want to keep him in character.
> 
> Next update will be a shorter chapter, sorry! I’ve written three more so far.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve tries to work out how long he was in the ice for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never normally update mid-week, but I just couldn't resist. There'll be another one at the weekend too, but a shorter one.

The temperature dropped again in the night. He huddled under his coat and curled as tightly as he could to hold in his body heat, but it felt impossible to get warm. 

He felt keyed up and twitchy sleeping alone in the open. His ears strained endlessly to hear any sound that might indicate someone approaching, no matter how much he tried to convince himself he was well hidden in the dark. 

He felt quite sure someone could pass within a few feet of him without noticing him, but it made no difference. Every part of him was on high alert. 

To distract himself, he tried to imagine he was sleeping somewhere warm and safe. Perhaps lying in his own bed in Brooklyn, three blankets piled on top. The top layer was one of his ma’s patchwork quilts, maybe the one with the swooping stitchwork in the corners. His home would be quiet, hundreds of familiar people sleeping within yards of him up and down the street. His mom’s bed was empty because she was dead. 

_No, not there_ , he thought, hastily revising the mental image. 

He was outside, listening to the rustling of the trees above him, as the scant wind shivered through their leaves. Perhaps he could be lying on his bedroll in Poland, somewhere near the farm they’d camped at for the night. They’d walked a fair distance the past few days together but they’d covered the miles safely and they could expect transport in the early morning. Gabe was somewhere near his feet, and Dugan had the first watch. Bucky was lying pressed against his back for warmth, breathing noisily through an open mouth like he always- 

His physically recoiled, sucking in a breath. His eyes flew open with a jolt. 

There was no one snoring at his back. No one keeping watch. He lay alone amongst the nettles, flinching at the distant noise of the traffic. 

For the rest of the night, Steve dipped in and out of an uneasy doze. 

Shortly after the first rays of light penetrated the branches above him, he was rolling stiffly to his feet. He unfolded wooden limbs. When he twitched his hands open, he felt the cold pinching painfully at his fingers again, and raised a hand to his face to look more closely at how it was healing. 

The back of his hand was glowing a sickly blue, as the blood pumped sluggishly under translucent skin. His fingers were red with the cold, but the very tips of his fingers were almost uniformly black, as though dipped in tar. A week ago, his fingernails had been black too, but as he inspected it, he could see the black lines receding as new tissue replaced it. The pain came from the throbbing red areas – the blackened tips had no sensation. 

He tapped his fingers together idly. The odd, numb sensation reminded him of when he had played about with candle wax as a child, dipping fingers into hot wax and letting it cool into fragile little caps perfectly moulded to his skin. 

He sighed, and tried to straighten his clawed fingers, but the muscles spasmed in a tight, relentless grip, so he slowly clenched his hand into a fist instead. He hadn’t thought any part of his hand was warm, but his fingertips were pebbles of cold pressed into his palm. He put them in his mouth and sucked on them to warm them as he stepped back onto the path. 

He walked around the park for a while, getting his bearings. There were a few good-sized lakes, and one long, meandering stream that cut a route through most sections of the park, but any decent-looking swimming spot had an unpleasant spread of algae blooms, and obnoxious signage proclaiming NO SWIMMING NO DOGS NO DRINKING in urgent tones, with an explanation of the potential poisoning underneath. 

Instead, Steve chose to tramp a little way above one of the lakes, where he was less conspicuous unless someone walked along the path above and looked directly down. He knelt in a quiet spot next to the stream, and stripped to the waist to wash. Without soap, or even a washcloth, he was limited on the cleanliness he could achieve, but it still felt good to peel the dirty clothes away. 

The running water wouldn’t show him a reflection, but he surmised from the prickling pain in his face that his nose and face looked pretty similar to his fingertips and hands. He could also glimpse a bit of black on his nose, just in the corner of his eye, but it didn’t rub off with water, and felt curiously numb when he poked it. So, not just dirt, then. 

He inspected patches of oozing skin on his arms and torso with a clinical eye. In some places, such as his upper arms, the skin appeared more or less healed. In other places, like near his elbow, blisters from the frostbite seemed to have had popped open and rubbed raw. 

He surveyed one patch on his right arm with particular irritation. He was trying to use his left arm as little as possible to give the fracture the best chance of healing, and he deeply resented having injuries on both limbs. 

_All limbs_ , he inwardly corrected, as he glanced at the equally angry-looking skin on his legs. Feeling irritable, he peeled back his uniform and washed the rest of himself as best he could with splashes of cold river water. 

He would have liked to completely dunk his uniform in the water and scrub it too, but he had nothing else to wear and it would take too long to dry. As it was, his clothes got thoroughly wet in the whole process, so he shuffled along to a bench in the sun when he was finished, and sat shivering as he waited to dry. 

He was glad that his frostbite and other injuries were healing, but he was immensely frustrated at how slowly it was happening. He felt sure that the lack of food was hampering his body’s healing factor. He also knew that snatching brief power naps would be enough to keep him going, but no more. 

He missed his team. They’d always taken in turns to keep watch during the night, even on base. And nine times out of ten, Bucky and Steve always slept within arm’s reach of each other. He hadn’t fully appreciated at the time the feeling of security and safety that came from being surrounded by friends as he slept. 

He felt the pang of sorrow and loneliness deep in his gut. _They’re dead now_. 

Steve surveyed the scene in front of him. People ambling along with their dogs, eyes glued to the... _what the hell even are those light box things_ , Steve thought with frustration. He twitched his empty hands, grimacing as they throbbed, blood condensing into prickles of pain. He glumly tried clenching and unclenching his hands to keep the blood moving. 

A couple of early morning joggers, doing steady laps of the lake. Every now and then some fancy swell in a sharp suit, cutting through the park on their way to work. Steve eyed one suspiciously as he marched past, barking out loud instructions to no one in particular. 

“If they can’t do 4 o’clock tell them they can wait another two months, I don’t care if they’ve no childcare, tell them that’s their options. Tell her I’ve got to get home to my kids or something. No, of course I haven’t got kids, but if that’s how she wants to play it...!” 

He had white wires dangling from his ears, but nothing in his hands. Maybe he was listening to a new kind of radio? Or...practising out loud for a part in a play? 

_Or maybe he’s just crazy_ , Steve thought. He narrowed his eyes disapprovingly. They shouldn’t let people like that out. One of his neighbours had an adult brother who was crazy, and they rightly kept him locked in their flat and didn’t talk about him. 

_Used to have_ , he inwardly amended. _They’re dead now_ . He had to keep reminding himself, had to keep trying to reorganise his entire understanding of the world. His entire understanding of who he was, what he did and why he existed. _Everyone’s dead, you survived, you time-travelled by yourself into the future through the ice._

Maybe he was crazy. It certainly sounded crazy, even if he wasn’t mad enough to start talking to himself like that fella. 

He was hungry, but he racked his brains and couldn’t come up with any sensible ideas of how to find breakfast, so he gave it up for now. Maybe something would turn up. 

But thinking of the Howlies had put a new restlessness in him. He had intended to walk all the way to the army base, where most everybody shipped out from, himself included. He hadn’t even intended to walk through his neighbourhood first, but as soon as he’d set foot in Brooklyn, he’d felt so desperate for home that nothing else would do. 

Seeing his home so completely and unexpectedly transformed had completely overwhelmed him, but having rested and recovered somewhat, he felt a reluctant sense again of a journey unfinished. 

He waited until the sun had properly risen, and the wave of commuters and school children had thoroughly ebbed, before getting up to move. The sky was a perfect, searing blue, and the day promised to be hot. He would dry off eventually. Maybe he’d be warm later. 

His destination was at least another hour’s walk, and he took his time. There was no urgency about his pace this time, and he let himself carefully scrutinise the bizarre sights as he slipped along with the crowds with the ease of long familiarity. 

A man with long, shiny hair and a light, floaty red outfit sauntered past a brazen woman with cropped hair and _skin-tight pants_. A scooter hummed past him on the sidewalk, the driver somehow keeping both feet firmly in place for as long as Steve looked, not needing to push. He had a pack on his back that was somehow a perfect green cube. 

This part of Brooklyn seemed far busier nowadays, and the buildings were mostly taller, so that made sense there would be more people. There was an unerring sense of wrongness everywhere he looked, but he tried to find the familiarity where he could. 

Brooklyn still looked nothing like Prague, for example. The brownstone architecture was basically unchanged, although interspersed by gleaming metal and glass creations that was obviously the modern fashion in buildings. 

He didn’t particularly like it. 

He recalled the building he’d seen perched over his old Central Station, reflecting the lights on Park Avenue. _Stark._ He had assumed at the time it was Howard’s tower, but it couldn’t be, could it? Did his descendants live there now, perhaps? The tower’s namesake could be unrelated to Howard, but it seemed too much of a coincidence to have another influential Stark family in New York. Or perhaps Howard had founded the company, and it now carried his name even after his death, with little more meaning to folk than a letterhead on a payslip, or a tradename stamp on a new product. 

Exactly how much time had passed? 

In the state of exhaustion before he had collapsed on his old street, he had understood enough to know that decades had passed, and perhaps had immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario in his head by picturing centuries. He wasn’t usually a pessimist, but everyone had their limit, and he acknowledged that maybe intense sleep deprivation meant he hadn’t been thinking straight at the time. 

He barely dared to hope that some of his friends could have survived all this time, but as soon as the possibility entered his head, a painful longing surged up in his chest and lodged itself in his throat. 

So, that was a question that needed answered, and quickly. 

He picked up the pace a bit. Squinted at the buildings as he passed, trying to objectively categorise architectural styles and catalogue the decades that had passed. The fact that his own building was still standing had to put the time he’d been in the ice...less than 150 years. Maybe less than 200 – he didn’t know what kind of technology went into maintaining buildings, but maybe they’d had new inventions. 

But the fact that the doctor hadn’t heard of the war put it at least ten years since it had ended. He couldn’t believe the atrocities of the death camps could fade from the forefront of in the public’s mind any faster than that. 

The technology he’d seen in the hospital, in the shipping yard, just walking down the street – that was at least thirty years ahead of his time, possibly a lot more. 

He hesitated. And...for him to literally pass out on his home street for a day, two days, whatever, and no kind-hearted neighbour to happen to pass by or investigate and recognise Sarah Rogers’ son... 

That’s a long time, Steve thought to himself, subdued. His ma’s friends must all be dead, or moved away from the area in old age. That’s fifty years at least. 

Still, that was hope. He’d never actually asked Peggy’s exact age and she had never offered it. She didn’t like the men to know, she’d confided once to him. It was hard earning respect in a man’s world, and she didn’t want to be seen as a shy young thing. (He’d laughed, but she hadn’t, and he’d shut his mouth pretty quick.) At times, they’d made a bit of a joke out of him not knowing her age, had wickedly passed around all sorts of rumours about her age, but she had privately admitted she was younger than him. She could...she could... 

He stopped dead in his tracks in horror. 

Even if she weren’t dead...Peggy would be an old woman now. She’d have a husband and kids, a house with a garden. She’d have a calendar with all her grandkids’ birthdays, and she’d go to bed early because her back ached. She wouldn’t wear her bold red lipstick anymore because her old hands shook too much to put it on. 

She might forget where she left her slippers, and she might have forgotten the man she shared a single kiss with in 1943. 

People’s voices were buzzing in his ears. Elbows jostled past him, scowling faces turned his way to see what he was doing, a boulder planted without warning on the sidewalk. 

Stunned, he stepped aside. Hunkered down by the wall. Processing. Reorganising. 

He gave himself only a few minutes before he rose and started walking again. If nothing else, Steve Rogers didn’t give up. 

When he eventually reached the base, he allowed himself another pause. There was no rush. No one was waiting for him. 

Last time he’d been here, he’d arrived by car. They’d given him 24 hours’ leave between the show in Manhattan and his departure from the US, and he’d spent it mostly at Bucky’s ma’s place. 

Rebecca had made the dinner, and been real upset she burnt something of it. He couldn’t remember what. He’d gone out in the evening to see Tom and Gary and some of the guys that were still left, but they’d wanted to go into town to ‘celebrate’ his shipping out to Europe and he’d not been in the mood. 

He’d endured their good-natured teasing, gave as good as he’d got, then they’d all slapped him on the shoulder (hard - his friends had been endlessly fascinated by his new body) and he’d made his excuses and turned in early. He’d slept in Bucky’s old bedroom, and slipped out noiselessly in the morning into the car that waited for him by the porch. 

When the family had said their goodbyes over dinner, before he’d headed out to see his friends, Rebecca had given him a letter for Bucky. She wanted him to put in the post when he got to the right side of the Atlantic because ‘you may as well take it if you’re going that way anyway, and you don’t mind, do you?’. 

And Bucky’s mom had pulled him into a tight hug and pressed her hand fiercely to the back of his head as though he were really part of her family. She’d said, ‘you look after yourself Stevie, we need you back here in one piece’, as if he’d actually been going to do something useful and fight, and not just prance around in tights. 

Hell, he’d hated those tights. 

If anyone ever found Bucky’s body, they’d have brought it back here, to the base. His mom and his sister would have come down this way maybe, if they’d been allowed to see the body. Bucky would have a grave somewhere, now. 

Bucky’s mom would have a grave somewhere now, too. 

Steve half-shook his head, as though he could dislodge the image. He felt like he’d been living in a dreamworld. A nightmarish, unreal, half-existence, where everyone he knew was dead and he might be invisible, because anyone who looked at him had vacant eyes that slipped right on past him. 

But he knew that if he spoke to someone, they’d look him in the eyes, and he wouldn’t be invisible. He needed to be on. He needed to be Captain America, the best version of himself, not just sad, lonely Steve Rogers. 

So Steve gave himself a little time to collect his thoughts before he approached the guard at the entrance. The new sign said _Brooklyn Army Terminal._

‘Morning, Captain!’ the man shouted, and for a moment Steve’s heart convulsed in his chest. 

Then the man laughed uproariously, and Steve realised he was joking around. He wasn’t wearing the stolen jacket in the hot sun, and the white star on his chest must be distinctive enough even now. He thought quickly, and plastered a smile on his own face. 

‘Morning, soldier!’ he called, matching the man’s tone and demeanour. 

The man let out a bark of delighted laughter. ‘I’m no soldier, Captain, sorry to disappoint. Who you here for?’ His smile was open and engaging as he surveyed Steve with a relaxed interest. He leaned forward, peering down from the booth to see what entertainment Steve might bring him on an otherwise dull morning waving cars in and out. 

‘Well, I was hoping you might be able to help me with that,’ Steve hedged, still smiling like they were sharing a private joke. ‘Do you know who I am?’ 

‘Well, I know Captain America when I see him,’ the man replied amusedly, and Steve’s heart did that strange convulsion in his chest again. He was here, he was real, he _did_ exist. 

‘It’s a cracking costume,’ the man went on. ‘You really look like you’ve been through the war - pardon the pun. But what the hell have they done to your face? Is that like, movie makeup?’ 

The man abruptly started looking around himself with an air of eagerness, craning his neck to look in the eaves of the booth, and squinting down the street in the direction Steve had just come from. Steve felt slightly disconcerted, like he’d missed a cue. 

‘...Something like that,’ said Steve vaguely when the man eventually looked back at him expectantly. ‘So, you reckon you know your history, do you?’ He was using his best stage voice, as he grinned at the man with just a hint of a challenge. 

‘Well, I reckon everyone knows _your_ history, Captain,’ the man said enthusiastically. He was sitting up straight, almost preening somewhat. 

Steve had the strong sensation that he was missing something obvious, but he had no idea what. 

‘Alright then, let’s see...’ mused Steve. ‘Can you tell me where Captain America was born?’ 

‘Brooklyn,’ came the prompt response. Steve had known he’d get that one. The man’s accent was local. 

‘Correct!’ he proclaimed. He gulped. Now or never. He needed to know, somehow. ‘Can you tell me...what year did he die?’ 

‘Oh...second world war,’ the man said easily. ‘Nineteen forty...in the forties.’ 

‘And how long ago was that?’ 

‘Ehhh...’ The man frowned. ‘That’s a maths question.’ He squinted at Steve. ‘I only said I knew history.’ 

‘Just roughly,’ Steve assured him, flashing a smile. The man didn’t return it. 

‘Well...2012...and the forties...that’s about...’ 

_Twenty-twelve._

Sixty-nine years, three months, and about two weeks, Steve’s mind supplied. Numbers and calculations had flashed through his head almost instantaneously. 

Twenty-twelve. He was in a new millennium. 

The roaring sound was back in his ears again. Numbers spun through his head. Dugan had been 33. Falsworth had been 31. Peggy had been about 25. 

‘...about seventy years, roughly,’ the man finished. ‘Long time ago.’ 

Steve was looking past him, over at the immense concrete buildings of the base. The complex they’d started building the same year he was born. It had been a marvel, when they’d first put it up. Thousands of men involved in the construction, one of the biggest projects anywhere in the country. The walls were chipped and wind-weathered now, darkened by age. 

‘Yeah,’ he heard himself echo, distantly. ‘Long time ago.’ 

There was a shuffling pause. The atmosphere had changed. Steve knew the feeling intimately from the USO shows. He had lost his audience. 

“So, who is it you’re here to see? Do you know where you’re going?” 

Steve was quiet. Thinking. He was trying to absorb new information, spin it around and spit out the plan like he always did, but it wasn’t working for him like it usually did. His head just kept spinning back to the same thing. _Twenty-twelve. Twenty-twelve. Twenty-twelve_. 

“This place isn’t an army base anymore, I take it,” he said at last. 

“It’s the army terminal. Brooklyn Army Terminal. That’s where you’re looking, isn’t it? All sorts of businesses here rent out space here. What unit are you looking?” 

Steve laughed. The harsh sound startled them both. “The 107th". 

The man definitely wasn’t smiling now. “I don’t know that unit. What’s the company name?” 

Steve shook his head. Tried to hold it together. He was _Captain America_. He could do this, and more. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m doing this all wrong. Listen – I really am Captain America. I’m not an actor, or whatever you think I am.” 

The guard’s face was stony. 

“I came back here because I thought I might be able to report back to base. But this place hasn’t been an army base for a long time, has it? It’s offices now. So where do I go?” 

“Where do you go for what?” There was definite suspicion now. Steve persisted. 

“To report back. I need to tell people I’m alive – I need to see if anyone I know is still alive.” 

The man was staring at him. Steve forced himself not to look away or flinch. This was the _truth._ He should never be ashamed of speaking the truth. 

“Son,” the guard said at last. “Steve Rogers is dead. He died about seventy years ago. We’ve just established that. I mean, I’ve seen his grave. There’s a statue for the guy. Whatever you’re playing at, it isn’t funny. Look, is this on camera?” 

“I hope not,” said Steve. 

“You’re actually serious, aren’t you?” 

Steve took a deep breath. 

“I am,” he said. 

There was another incredulous silence. 

“Look, you’re supposed to have a pass or an appointment or something if you want in,” the man said finally. “I can’t just let anybody wander in. You’ll have to come back another time.” 

Another time. 

“I have come back another time,” said Steve, amused despite himself. “That’s exactly what I’ve done, actually.” 

“Another time,” the man said doggedly. “Nice talking to you.” 

Steve nodded, accepting the dismissal. “Thanks for your help,” he told the older man, genuine. It wasn’t this man’s fault Captain America was sixty-nine years and three months too late. 

That was all on Steve. 

Aimless now, he turned his feet slowly towards the promenade and walked along by the river. He had the vague idea of wandering past Coney Island beach, see if it had changed. It was a walk, but it wasn’t like he had anywhere to be. 

The open expanse of the water was kind of a relief after the pulsing crowds on people on the sidewalks. More and more, he was focusing on geography and landmarks as static points in the landscape. People lived and died, but really big things in the city didn’t change. Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State. 

Thirty minutes later, he came to a halt. Looked in disbelief. He leaned his hip against the railing and laughed and laughed. 

There was a brand new bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn. 

A neat little shortcut. He hadn’t needed to walk all those miles to get home. He’d taken the long way round, thinking himself so familiar and confident to navigate just from his sense of direction and his memories, and all the time completely oblivious to walking an extra twenty miles round because he didn’t have a damn clue where he was. 

He laughed until he choked, as his throat abruptly spasmed around an invisible stone. And then he bowed his head and held himself completely still, so his shoulders wouldn’t shake with his sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there we go, the big reveal! Hopefully our boy can plan better now, although I'm not sure knowing the year increases his options much...  
> Do you think Steve has been smart to find out as much as he has already? What do you think he's going to do next? How is he going to get food? Answers on a postcard, the next chapter is already written but I'm really intrigued to see what people think his realistic options are in this situation.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve runs out of options on the street.

He lifted the lid of the trashcan and held his breath as he peered in and poked around. 

Lots of empty wrappers, plenty of disgusting slop, but not much in the way of actual edible food. He rummaged around gingerly for a couple of minutes, before closing it and moving on down the street to the next one. 

So far, he’d collected a dry, cracked piece of cheddar cheese, four squishy apples, and a third of a loaf of bread with only a bit of mould on the top couple of slices. He’d been so hungry he’d eaten them all right then and there, even nibbling down as much of the apples cores as he could. He’d also found some containers with a white sauce on them, and he’d licked those clean too. 

Steve had thought extensively, but he had limited options. No money, no contacts, and he was now forcing himself to accept that he had limited intel about the area, he really needed help. Having checked his last known local army base and had no success, his next idea was to try and find out where the nearest modern base was located, report to whoever the commanding officer was, and put himself at their mercy. He knew that would be the protocol. 

But he kind of felt protocol might have gone out the window a little bit. 

In the next trashcan, he found a chicken carcass, obviously the remains of a roast dinner. For some reason, the cook hadn’t bothered to boil it down into nutritious stock. After half an hour of poking through discarded food, Steve thought he had spent all his surprise at the wastefulness of this neighbourhood, but he still felt a rise of indignation. Meat was _expensive_. What a waste. He’d always bought the cheaper cuts from the butchers, but even one helping of the liver his doctor had recommended for his anaemia had cost more than a week’s worth of potatoes. 

He sighed. Even if he’d known where he could go next, either to report back or just to beg anyone for help, he literally did not have the energy to walk any more miles. Which was why he’d only wandered a couple of blocks, before heading down this residential back alley and started looking through the trash. He needed rest, and he needed food, urgently, or he’d end up passed on the ground somewhere anyway. 

Specifically, he needed protein. And meat had protein. 

He eyed the chicken grimly, and then pulled it out carefully, so it wouldn’t fall apart. He picked out the soggy carrot peelings in the chest cavity. It had probably been there a day or two, and it looked truly disgusting. But however run down he was, the serum was unlikely to let him get food poisoning. And he reminded himself sternly he’d eaten far worse than cooked chicken. He’d eaten that liver raw, every week he could afford it, right up until the day he got the serum. Now _that_ had been disgusting. 

Steve peeled off a bit of the skin, bundled it in his mouth, and chewed. 

It somehow managed to be greasy and dry at the same time. It was also warm, from being in the trash on a hot day. He pulled the carcass apart, methodically snapping off the pieces so he could sucking off any remaining meat and spit out the inedible bones. He knew protein was especially important for rebuilding and repairing, and he didn’t expect meat would be any easier to acquire now than it had been when he was anaemic. 

When he’d finished, he cleaned his hands and face as best he could using the inside of his stolen jacket, tidied up the mess he’d made, and moved on to the next trashcan. There was no point lollygagging about. 

The cops caught up with him about an hour later, as he was in the process of putting the debris of yet another of his meals back in the trashcan. 

“Alright there?” the officer greeted, friendly enough. 

“Hello,” said Steve, shortly. 

He’d seen the pair of them strolling towards him. But he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Nobody else wanted this trash food, and he was leaving everything as he found it. And he was _hungry._

The officer nodded towards the nearest house. “Is this your property?” 

“No,” Steve replied. 

“So not your trash then?” 

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Steve said defiantly. 

“I hear that a lot,” she said dryly. She smiled at Steve. 

He didn’t smile back, but some of the tension dropped out of his shoulders. He shifted on his feet slightly. 

“We’ve had a couple of calls. You’ve been out here a while, I take it?” 

Steve shrugged. 

“People get a little worried about someone going through their trash. Identity theft, you know.” 

_Stealing an identity?_ Steve thought. _From a trash can?_

“I'm not stealing anything,” he said slowly. Was he? This world was so strange. 

“Why are you looking through people’s trash?” 

Steve said nothing. He felt the hot flush of shame rise up his neck. 

There was a long, drawn-out pause. 

When it became apparent Steve wasn’t going to answer, the second officer tried. 

“I’m Denise,” she offered, with a smile. “This is Rebecca.” 

“Oh,” he said uncertainly. “Hi. Rebecca.” She didn’t look anything like his Rebecca. His Rebecca’s hair was so light it was nearly as blonde as his own. She was very competitive about it, because she wanted to be more blonde. She often held her hair up to his, just to check he was still winning. Her hair usually ticked his face. 

But this Rebecca’s hair was dark. 

“What’s your name?” Denise prompted. 

“Steve.” He saw her expression go carefully blank. Her eyes flicked down briefly across his Captain America uniform. 

“Steve...?” 

He hesitated. If he said Steve Rogers, he knew how they’d react. The lady doctor in the hospital, the guard at the Brooklyn Army Base – _Terminal_ , he corrected himself, _not a base anymore_ – had both been quite clear that they didn’t believe he was telling the truth when he said he was Captain America come back from the dead. 

That meant that so far, anyone he’d told the truth to had thought he was a liar, or crazy. In all fairness, he thought the time travel thing was all pretty unbelievable himself. Except, he _knew_ he wasn’t lying. 

If he told these officers his name was Steve Rogers, they’d ask, ‘you mean like Captain America?’ and he’d say ‘Yes, that’s me!’ and they’d keep their careful blank eyes and supportive smiles until they had him carted off to the asylum. 

Things might have changed a lot in the last seventy years, but he was pretty sure that the policy of locking up people who were dangerous would still be the same. 

No way was anyone locking Steve Rogers in an asylum. 

“Just...just Steve,” he said, feeling something inside him break. 

“What’s your last name?” Denise persisted. 

He shook his head slowly. The officers exchanged glances. 

“Ok, Steve,” Denise started coaxingly. “What are you looking for in the trash?” 

He could be honest about this, couldn’t he? _Captain America doesn’t lie._

“I’m hungry,” he muttered, ashamed. 

Denise nodded understandingly. “Did you find anything to eat? What have you had to eat today?” 

“I found some stuff in the trash,” Steve said dully. 

“And yesterday?” 

“Someone gave me some food. Two people.” 

“Ok, that’s good. So some people have given you some food. Did you know them? Are they friends?” Denise’s voice was kind. Steve shook his head again. They hadn’t been his friends, had they? That was the problem. He didn’t have any friends in this place. In this time. 

“So some strangers gave you some food. Ok. Where are you staying at the minute, Steve?” 

He looked at her mutely. It all sounded so bad when he said it out loud. He’d thought he’d been doing ok. He could feel his pulse picking up. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, in some distress. Maybe he hadn’t been allowed to sleep in the park. There had probably been signs, he hadn’t even looked. 

“What are you sorry for?” Her voice was calm. She kept her gaze focused on him. 

“I didn’t look to see if there were any signs. I’m sorry, I didn’t think to look. I was really tired.” He felt miserable and disappointed in himself. He’d been trying so hard, tidying up everything he left, tucking himself into quiet corners, and still, all he was doing was causing trouble for people. 

She digested this. “You’re sorry because you went to sleep somewhere, but there might have been signs saying that wasn’t allowed, is that right? Don’t worry about it, Steve. Everyone has to sleep somewhere. But where are you sleeping tonight?” 

“I’ll find somewhere,” he assured her. “I’m sorry to bother you. But I’ll make sure I’m not in anyone’s way.” 

The two women exchanged glances again. 

“I will,” he insisted. “I won’t bother anyone.” 

“I’m a bit worried about your hands, Steve,” Rebecca said carefully. “And your nose. It looks like you’ve hurt yourself.” 

_It’s ok, it’s just the frostbite from my seventy-year nap in the ice_ , Steve thought. He couldn’t say that either. 

“I’m fine,” he said instead. 

“Have you seen a doctor about it?” 

“Yes.” 

Rebecca was quiet for a long moment, considering him. Her fingers drummed on her bulky vest. Steve noticed she was wearing a gun on her hip, and felt glad neither of them had moved their hands towards their weapons. Then she said, “Can I be honest with you, Steve?” 

“Of course,” he said, slightly startled. 

“I think Denise and I are a bit worried about you. You’ve said you’ve seen a doctor, and that’s great, but I’m a bit worried that you’re not getting enough food, and about where you’re sleeping tonight. I would feel better if we could take you to see a doctor, just to check that you’re ok. And I think we might be able to talk to someone to find you some food and somewhere to sleep tonight. What do you think, Denise?” She turned to her partner for support. 

“I think that would be a good idea,” Denise agreed. “I’d feel a lot better if we could do that. Steve? What do you think?” 

Inexplicably, Steve could feel himself trembling slightly. He wondered why on earth why. It wasn’t that cold. 

“I don’t need any help,” he said in a low voice. 

But he knew that wasn’t true. 

“It’s your choice, Steve,” said Denise gently. “We’re not going to say you’ve got to come with us. But I would really feel much better if you could come with us, and see one of the doctors, and then maybe speak to one of our colleagues to see what else we can help with. And then if you want, you can leave. But could you do that for me? Come to the hospital?” 

Steve wavered. 

“I don’t-” he started. He licked his lips anxiously. He could still taste the greasy chicken he’d fished out of the trash. “I really don’t need any help,” he tried. “Honestly, I’m fine. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.” 

“Oh, if that’s your only objection!” said Denise cheerfully. “That’s what we’re all here for sweetheart, don’t worry about wasting anyone’s time. Imagine a hospital if people never went for a check-up. Or police if no one ever called us. We’d all be out of a job!” She smiled at him encouragingly. Without thinking, he found himself giving her a small smile in return. 

“I _am_ fine,” he said again, without much energy. 

“Come on then, we parked the car round the corner,” she said firmly, and chivvied him along. He moved obediently. 

His head was still pounding with directives, ideas, urgency. But he felt like he might trust these two. And it felt really, really good to be standing next to someone who was looking at him sympathetically. 

As the three of them walked along, Rebecca said, “I like your outfit, Steve. It looks really authentic. Where did you get it from?” 

She said it like she wanted to know what store he’d bought a nice pair of shoes from. 

“...I’ve had it a while,” Steve responded in a strangled voice. 

“Do you often dress up as Captain America?” 

Steve opened and closed his mouth but found he had absolutely no response to that. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's in hospital again, but this time he's in New York.

They put him in his own room in this hospital.

Steve had quietly submitted to almost everything asked of him. He’d stripped off his clothes to put on yet another hospital gown, and let them examine his arm, hands, feet, and other injuries. He’d obediently lain perfectly still when they explained they wanted to take various  scans, and slid him into a machine that was apparently a fancy x-ray camera, but made terrifyingly loud banging noises and prompted him to re-evaluate his previously high opinions of the future’s technological advances.

He’d let them take pictures of his hands and feet and signed a form consenting to the pictures being included in someone’s research. He had devoured every piece of food they’d given him, and then some, having no compunctions about asking for more.

But he had flatly refused to cooperate with letting them take bloods or any other samples. 

He’d also so far refused to give any more information than his name was Steve (no last name), he was ‘about 26’, and he’d been born on the  22 nd July. (Captain America’s birthday was the 4 th of July, but Steve Rogers’ was not.) He’d been stubbornly silent when they’d asked him where he was from.

They’d evidently not been able to find any medical records for him from this scant information. This had naturally made several people rather suspicious, so they’d called a police officer back over, and he’d agreed to give a set of fingerprints. A nurse had tutted disapprovingly at the police officer who physically pressed Steve’s clumsy, swollen fingers into an inkpad and then onto paper, but the set of fingerprints seemed to have mollified people somewhat, as he’d not heard any more about needing any blood tests.

He’d generally answered all of their questions as truthfully but vaguely as he could, having resolved that if he wanted to avoid being locked up, the best course of action was probably to say as little as possible, tell the truth where he could, and keep his story as simple as they would let him. 

This resolution obviously caused him significant issues.

“So Steve, let’s start with how old are you?”

Steve pursed his lips. He had been answering questions all day, and this one was not a favourite of his. It was 94 years since the year of his birth, but somehow he didn’t think that was the answer required here.

“What age am I?” he said now. “I’m 26.” Somehow, rephrasing it seemed less of a lie. To look at him, he was clearly aged in his twenties.

The lady who was apparently checking his memory and his mental state noted this down on her clipboard, and immediately followed up by asking his date of birth. Steve floundered for a moment, then responded with his birthday, and just omitted to mention the year, as he had when he’d been asked the same question earlier in the day.

When she repeated the question, he awkwardly deflected, and let her calculate that he must have been born in 1985?

“Sounds about right,” said Steve weakly, not missing the piercing look she gave him as she wrote it down.

She asked a few more questions that he was able to answer, about where he was at the moment, the current year, and what time of day it was.

“Who is the President at the moment?”

_ Ah, damn.  _ “I don’t follow politics,” Steve said blandly. She quirked an eyebrow at him. 

“Who’s the last President you can recall being in office?” she persisted. “Or...” she considered. “Do you follow baseball or football or anything? Can you name any players?”

_ Pretty sure President Roosevelt isn’t around  _ _ anymore _ _. And you won’t know any of my team. _

Steve just shook his head with  a tight smile.

She regarded him with a look he was becoming very familiar with. A mixture of polite incredulity, and growing concern. She scribbled something on her clipboard.

His heart sank. He knew (from a mixture of eavesdropping and stolen glances at clipboards and name badges) that this doctor was at least one of the team charged with deciding if he was crazy or not. He couldn’t afford many wrong answers here.

“Ok.” She clicked her pen. “And you’re refusing to tell people your last name. Why is  that, Steve? Have you forgotten your name?”

“No,” he said, nettled. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

“Are you sure?” she pounced on that. “You can obviously remember everything that’s happened today. What about yesterday? The day before? Last week? Can you remember last month?”

_ Last month I was in Europe fighting in the war on civilisation,  _ Steve thought to himself. But she wouldn’t believe that. Or worse, she wouldn’t believe it, but she’d know he  _ did  _ believe it, and she’d scribble something on her form like ‘unstable mental state’ or ‘potentially dangerous due to unexplained hallucinations’, and the next doctor to come along would be carrying a strait jacket.

“I can remember,” was all he said.

A horrible thought flitted into his head. Did he  definitely remember everything right? Could he trust his own  memories?

He focused back on the situation at hand.

“...traumatic experiences,” she was saying. “We sometimes suppress things we don’t want to think about just yet. When something has particularly upset us, we try our best to ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen.” She was looking at him gravely.

_ Well, that sounds perfectly sensible to me _ , Steve thought in bafflement.  _ Why in the name of goodness would I want to sit and think about something upsetting? _

“ Mmm ,” he managed, non- committally .

“And when our brains won’t let us think about those traumatic experiences, they can invent something else. A new version of events. Make something up, so to speak.” She stared hard at him as she spoke.

Steve tried to translate what she was saying. His brain could make something  up? What nonsense was this? He kept his expression bland.

“Sometimes, people don’t even know their brains are doing it,” she continued. “Or sometimes people know, deep down, that there’s something they can’t think about. Something horrible, that’s hard for them to even try and remember. Maybe they know there’s a gap in their memories.”

He flinched. Her sharp eyes didn’t miss it.

Was that possible? Hadn’t he just been wondering to himself if he could trust his own memories? He couldn’t remember seventy years of his life, that was true,  but, that was because he had been asleep, or hibernating, not because his brain was playing tricks on him.

No. She was obviously a shrink, and she was talking about the sort of thing lunatics did. He  definitely wasn’t crazy. He would know. He didn’t talk to himself, or lose time, or...

“Do you think that could be something that’s happening to you, Steve?” she asked, cutting across his thoughts. He met her gaze squarely.

“No, ma’am,” he said firmly. “I remember everything just fine.”

He wasn’t crazy. He  _ wasn’t. _

_ \-------------------------------------------------- _

He was sitting up in his bed, bored and looking out the window when another woman came into the room shortly, after the evening meal. As before, he’d devoured as much food as he could convince them to bring him. He was feeling guilty about not being able to pay them, and was idly considering the issue.

The woman wasn’t wearing an NYPD uniform, nor the shirt and tie of the medical consultants, or the easy-clean overalls many of the medical staff wore. This woman was wearing tight denim pants and an under-shirt with a beach scene motif painted on it. Although she wasn’t wearing a blouse over the top, so maybe it wasn’t called an under-shirt anymore.

Her outfit was fairly bizarre for a woman, but Steve had pretty much acknowledged at this point that his benchmark for acceptable women’s behaviour was probably well behind the times.

She stood just inside the door and smiled at him. Steve waited patiently to see what was expected of him now.

“I’m Amanda,” she introduced herself. “I know Denise and Rebecca – the police officers who brought you here this morning? Denise called and asked if I’d come down and talk to you. Sorry it’s taken me a while. Is it ok if I sit down?”

“Sure.” Steve indicated the visitors chair by the bed. She was one of a long line of unfamiliar people who had come to see him in the last six or seven hours. She sat.

“I’ve spoken to the doctors a little bit to ask how you’re doing, and they said it’s ok for me to come speak to you,” she explained. “I don’t work for the hospital, I work for a charity in the city, so they aren’t allowed to tell me very much without your permission. Someone might have explained to you they were going to call me, but I’m sure you’ve had a lot of people talking to you today.”

She paused, as though expecting some sort of response, so Steve nodded politely, though without much interest.

She went on, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been told about you so far. Two police officers spoke to you on a street nearby in Brooklyn. You told them you weren’t sure where you were going to sleep tonight, and you were finding it hard to get enough food. They were worried about some injuries you had, so you agreed to come here with them. And when you’ve speaking to the doctors today, you’ve told them your first name, your age, but not very much else. Is all of that right?”

Steve gave her a terse nod. He’d been keeping his expression blank all day, and now was no different.

“How are you doing, Steve?” she asked next.

“I’m fine.” He liked getting asked that question. Nice, easy question.

“Ok. How are you really doing?”

“I’m...” Could he just give the same answer twice? She’d asked the question twice. “I really am fine.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept looking at him expectantly. He tried again.

“I’m very grateful for all the help from everyone today.”

“Well, that’s what we’re all here for,” she agreed. “You know we’re all here to help you, Steve.”

This didn’t seem like something that required a response, so he just nodded again.

“So I’m here to work out how we can do that.”

Again, he said nothing. She sighed slightly.

“How did you end up on the streets, Steve?”

He thought about this for a long time before he gave his answer. She waited.

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he said at last. She nodded understandingly.

“Where have you been staying the last couple of months?”

“The...past couple of nights, I’ve been in New York. In Brooklyn. I’ve been sleeping outside, if that’s what you’re asking,” he responded.

“Ok, and before that? Where were you before you came to New York?”

“Somewhere else,” he said evasively.

“Ok. You don’t actually have to tell me if you don’t want, Steve,” she said, seriously. “I’m not going to tell the police, or anyone else, what we say to each other today, unless you give me reason to think you’re a danger to yourself or someone else. Other than that, it doesn’t matter to me if you’ve broken any laws. I’m just here to work out how we can help you. So don’t worry about that.”

_ I’m sure you won’t,  _ Steve thought  sceptically .

“But I do need to make sure that you’re safe. Is there anyone you’re trying to get away from, Steve?”

“What? No,” he said in confusion. That was the first time today he’d been asked  _ that. _

_ “ _ Has anyone hurt you?” 

Steve gave her a long look, but she seemed perfectly serious. He supposed given that he was currently in a hospital bed, maybe it was a reasonable question.

Still.

“No,” he said, slightly offended.

“Do you have a passport? Any documents with your name on?”

He shook his head.

“Does anyone else have them? Has anyone taken your passport away from you?”

He wasn’t  really sure how to answer that one, since he  actually had no idea what would have happened to all his things. Would they be in an archive somewhere? Captain America’s birth certificate?

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“Have you committed any crimes recently? Broken any laws?”

Steve sighed, and again, said nothing. She smiled faintly at him.

“Alright, I didn’t really think you were going to answer that one,” she confided. “But I had to ask. I’m just trying to work out if you’re a murderer on the run or something.”

“I’m not,” he assured her, with a rueful smile of his own. He opened his mouth to say more, remembered his rule about saying as little as possible, and snapped it shut again.

“Ok...” she mused. “ So you’ve been in New York a few days, and you don’t want to tell me where you were before that. How about...where were you born?”

“Brooklyn,” he admitted, after a short pause. Her face lit up.

“Oh, so you’re local! But you don’t have the accent. Did you grow up here?”

Steve couldn’t resist. “I  sorta lost the habit,” he said with a smile, deliberately slipping back into the accent he’d used as a child.

His ma had been very keen on him not sounding slightly Irish like her, (her accent had persisted ‘til the day of her death, despite her best efforts), but she’d also gotten cross when he spoke like the other kids on his street, so he’d gotten into the habit of speaking carefully at home. To his ma’s credit, it had come in useful when he’d had to step up on stage.

The woman laughed at him delightedly.

“You sound so proper when you talk!” she accused. “But you’re actually from round here. I couldn’t tell.”

“Sorry,” he said a little sheepishly. It hadn’t really occurred to him that his careful speaking was a sort of deception too. But she waved him off.

“No, no, I’m teasing. But I’m glad. Ok, so you’re from Brooklyn. Born here and grew up here. You’ve been somewhere else for a while, but you came back a couple of days ago. Yes?” She saw his posture tense up again. “No, no, it’s fine,” she reassured him. “I’m sorry to be so nosy. I’m not going to tell anyone this, unless you want me to for some reason. I’m just trying to get a bit of background.”

“Yes,” he acknowledged stiffly.

“Can you tell me what happened? I mean, you’re injured.” She gestured to his bandaged arm. “Or have your hands always looked like  that? Sorry, I’m not medical, you’ll have to excuse me.”

“The doctors really haven’t told you anything?” he asked in surprise. She shook her head.

“Only what I’ve already said. Doctor-patient confidentiality. They basically just said you’re awake enough to talk to,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. It felt kind of nice not to be the one in the dark for once. And he could tell her this stuff. “I’ve got a fractured forearm, some cracked ribs, and a couple of bruises and cuts and things, but the main thing they’re all worrying about is I’ve got deep tissue frostbite in my extremities from over-exposure to extremely low temperatures. That’s why my fingertips are black, and parts of my face too.” He wiggled his fingers at her. “I can’t feel very much in them, and the doctors are really worried about it. It’s healing fine though. They also thought I had a head injury, and I think I did-” he stopped abruptly. Maybe a head injury wasn’t the wisest thing to admit to. “But I’m fine now,” he finished hurriedly.

Amanda didn’t seem to have picked up on the head injury comment though. “Frostbite?” she said  incredulously. “Like, recently? It’s the summer! Nearly June!”

“Yeah,” Steve rubbed his head uncomfortably. “Well, I said I was somewhere else for a while.”

“Gosh,” she said, staring at his hands. “Is it sore?”

“Um. It’s not too bad. Sometimes a bit.”  _ A bit like being constantly pricked with tiny knives _ .

“Gosh,” she said again. “And so...” she hesitated. “How long were you outside for? In the cold?”

“A while,” Steve said evenly. “But like I said, it’s healing fine.”

“It sounds awful,” she said sincerely. “I’m really sorry that happened to you, Steve.”

“I- oh- it's fine. It was worth it.” He hadn’t been to say that, but it  _ had  _ been worth it. If he hadn’t put the plane in the ice, if the bomb had been dropped on New York, there might not have been a Brooklyn to come back to. Amanda, her life, her family, her job, all of that might not have existed. That was the decision he had made, and he didn’t regret it.

“What was worth it?” She obviously hadn’t followed his internal train of thought.

He shook his head, smiling slightly at her. “Never mind. Let’s leave that one.”

She accepted the deflection with good grace and leaned back in her chair. 

“So, Brooklyn kid, huh?” she said speculatively. “What high school did you go to? I hope you didn’t play basketball. I had a boyfriend in high school who played basketball, only our school’s team wasn’t very good. I’ll have to dislike you on principle if you ever beat him in a match.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m happy to report I had nothing to do with the basketball team. I was tiny as a kid.”

“You had one heck of a growth spurt then,” she observed. “What are you now, six foot?”

“Six three.” They’d measured him again today. It had been reassuring that some things didn’t change.

“I’d love to be tall,” she said enviously.

“It is pretty good,” he confirmed, and this time they both laughed.

“ So what school  _ did _ you go to?” she asked again.

He hesitated. What if his old high school didn’t exist anymore? But no - it must do - he recalled seeing the sign on his walk in the other day.

He told her. She gave him her old school’s name too, though he didn’t recognise it, so he nodded vaguely and changed the subject. 

“Do you work nearby then? You said you worked for a charity in the city,” he said. She brightened.

“Oh, well our head office is in Manhattan, but I go all over. We’ve got a couple of shelters around the city, and two mobile food vans, plus I do visits just wherever I’m needed. Like today,” she explained. “I’m one of the coordinators, so I’m not based in any one particular site.”

“And. ..what does your organisation do, exactly?” It hadn’t escaped Steve’s notice that she hadn’t said this from the beginning.

“We mostly help people who, for one reason or another, have found themselves homeless,” she said frankly. “That can be for lots of reasons, so we also work closely with other agencies providing other services. But my charity mainly focuses on short-term help, making sure someone has emergency accommodation and supplies.”

He looked away from her, feigning interest in something out the window. She wasn’t taken in.

“That’s why they called me,” she said gently. “I said I was here to help.”

He nodded silently, still not looking at her.

“Steve?” she prompted gently. “There’s no shame in needing help.”

He exhaled in a long breath.

“I’d  kinda thought...this wouldn’t happen again,” he confessed.

“What wouldn’t happen again?”

“Needing help like this.” There was something painful lodged in this throat. He didn’t trust himself to say any more.  _ The serum was supposed to fix me. _

“I guess no one can predict what’s going to happen in our futures,” she said. He heard her lean forwards in her chair. Her voice was still very gentle. “But no matter what, we all need help sometimes. No man is an island, Steve, haven’t you heard that expression?”

He huffed a laugh. Closed his eyes. Composed himself.

When he turned back, he was back in control. Feeling ashamed, again, of his weaknesses. He needed to remember how to be Captain America.

She smiled at him encouragingly.

“Ok,” she said. “Thank you for explaining all that, Steve. I know you’ve got your reasons for not wanting to share too much, but it’s really good to know a little bit about where you’re coming from.” She leaned back in her chair. “My question to you now is – what next?”

He sighed. He was clearly terrible at this resisting interrogation thing. Put him in front of a nice person trying to do the right thing, and he just couldn’t help but want to oblige them. Good thing he’d never been a spy.

“I don’t know,” he admitted frankly. “I’ve been trying to see if I’ve got any friends...I’ve been looking for people I know, but I’ve not had any luck yet. I don’t have a job – you know I haven’t got any  documentation – and I haven’t got a cent to my name. I need food and clothes and somewhere to stay – I hate asking for help, but that’s where I’m at. Once they let me out of here, I think I’m going to have to go further afield. Maybe see I can look people up in the library or the phone book or something.”

“Or you could try something like Facebook, if you know their names. Look things up online,” she offered.

“Er, yeah, that’s an idea,” he agreed uncertainly. “Thanks.”

“And if you can’t find any of your friends? What then? What’s Plan B?” she asked.

Steve thought for a while. “If I can’t find anyone who knows who I am...” he said slowly. “If no one knows me, then I guess I’ll have to be someone new.”

He looked at her anxiously. That had been quite a crazy thing to say. But she didn’t seem fazed.

“Ok,” she said agreeably. “Well, it sounds like you’ve got a medium to long term plan. I’m satisfied. What about short term? Where are you sleeping tonight?”

“Here,” he said dryly. “The bed’s very comfortable, I’ve booked it for the night.”

She barked out a startled laugh. “They told me before I came in here that you’re quiet and generally well-behaved!” she said accusingly. “I was not warned to expect someone with a sense of humour.”

“I have been known to make a joke from time to time,” he told her gravely, then smiled as she laughed again. It felt good to make someone laugh.

“Seriously though,” she said. “Where are you sleeping after you get out of here? Can I give you the details of some places to go?”

He nodded without speaking. It seemed the easiest thing to do. She pulled out a piece of paper with a list of addresses on it, and a  poor quality map on the other side. She started circling things and describing to him. 

“Sorry, the print quality’s rubbish, can you read it ok?” She pointed to one of the addresses. “Can you read this one out loud for me?” He obliged, and she nodded, satisfied. “Just checking,” she murmured.

She shuffled her papers together before tucking them back into her bag. She eyed his hospital gown.

“Have you got any other clothes? Any stuff?” she questioned.

“Oh, I’ve got-” he turned and pointed at his uniform, folded up on the side table.

She blinked at it confusedly. “Is that a Captain America costume? You need more clothes than that. Have you nothing else? Do you have a bag? What about soap and things?”

Steve showed her the fluttery white bag he’d kept in his pocket (a plastic carrier bag, she identified it), and the brown paper bag from his sandwich gift. He also found the green bill of money he’d completely forgotten had been given to him by a stranger, which turned out to be an incredible ten dollars.

He gaped at the amount for a moment, but Amanda just nodded, taking it all in her stride, and promised to come by tomorrow with some things for him. She pulled out her personal pocket machine and started tapping into it with her thumbs.

“Amanda,” he started hesitantly. She looked up at once. He pointed. “What is that?”

“This? My  Starkphone ?” She held it up. “It’s only the  Starkphone 2\. They’re supposed to be bringing out the four soon, but this one does the job. It’s my smartphone,” she added, seeing his look of incomprehension. “You know, a phone, smart like a computer.”

He nodded quickly. She stared at him for a few moments, obviously puzzled, then went back to tapping into her  Starkphone .

He felt immensely relieved to have names for the new things. Plastic carrier bag. Starkphone. Ok then. 

Finally, she pocketed her phone. She reassured him again that their conversation was confidential (‘Unless you turn out to be a threat to national security or something,’ she’d added as an afterthought. ‘I promise I’ll do my very best not to threaten national security,’ he’d responded dryly’).

She explained that the police would probably want to speak to him next, and she would send someone to sit with him for that meeting (‘It’s probably just a formality, they just need to check you’re not a risk to anyone before you’re discharged’) and she would just confirm to the police he hadn’t disclosed anything to her she was obligated to share with them.

“Listen,” she said before she disappeared. “I’m going to do my best for you, ok? But there’s only so much I can do this way. When you’re ready, you can tell me everything, and we can see about getting your name on a waiting list for some accommodation. But you’ll need to work with me.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. He felt like he should just write that on a sign and hang it around his neck. “I’ve got a plan.”

When she finally left, he looked carefully around the room. He felt more relaxed after speaking to her than he had at any point since he’d discovered he’d lost time in the ice. The tight band around his chest had loosened, so he could breathe more easily. And he wasn’t flinching at every unexpected background sound.

_ Still need to be careful though. _

He closed the blinds over the window, and set his water cup and some other things on the floor, so if anyone came in the  window they’d stumble on them. He supposed he wasn’t allowed to lock the door, but he closed the door over a little, and spread the plastic carrier bag over the floor so it would rustle if anyone entered and wake him at once.

He slept well that night.

——————————

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I promised a little bit of comfort was coming - so good to see Steve getting a chance to heal! Although sadly he's not getting any chance to form friendships with anyone, the nature of public services being what they are, he's passed around lots of different people. I want to show a little bit how isolating that can be, as it's a complaint I get a lot from my own patients that they hate getting different doctors/social workers/etc all the time.  
> A couple of commenters correctly guessed what was happening this chapter, so well done.  
> As always, I adore reading comments or seeing a kudos, even if it's just something short to say you like it. The email notifications throughout the day give me something to look at haha! Next chapter is written and will be up soon, either tomorrow or the weekend, depending on editing time.


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